violence

Redefinitions 3 – AST VS Popular Memes, Punishment

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Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc. Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

Redefinitions – 3. Punishment

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, this word, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “Punishment”

OK, “ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life,” I said, didn’t I. Of course the biggest failures are easy to see, we all agree it’s the case for people whose abuse went beyond all idea of control or teaching. Outright, illicit abuse we all see as abuse, we count the downsides of that, at least within the lives of the people and those around them, and intergenerationally, within families, even in whole communities we can see the effects quite often.

Regularly, an abuser will have called it punishment or some such, but over a certain line, we all know it’s abuse and we know it has downstream consequences that go on and on. People need therapy and such, a lot of extra love to find their way back to life, and still, effects escape into the stream of time and affect the next generation. We know about the bad feelings, the powerlessness, the anger, the ideations, the need to deflect, all bad things, no-one should be left to feel these awful things, feelings are involuntary and it is abuse to create the crime that induces them.

We know this.

However, I noticed and so AST speaks about the missing cause, the missing feelings, the perhaps less intense bad feelings we all get from the abuse that doesn’t cross our “line.” I intuit that this is a quarter at least of all causality in human affairs that is simply missing, but you know what, I’ve never actually tried to draw it, let’s try a truth table of sorts:

Ha – did I say one quarter, not three?

There are two sides to life, too, the personal and the public.

It seems to me that in human life, as I said, personal abuse stories are told, personal causes and effects are hashed out, but social life is rarely invoked as a cause, we do not talk about society causing abuse, it’s all personal. When it comes to abuse, we are on our own, no-one is planning to restructure society for that.

It’s a “personal journey,” donchaknow. How much of psychology.

So we count one of two sets of effects for outright, illegal abuse, the personal one. Public effects of extreme abuse? Is that a thing?

I’ll have you note, we count neither side of the second thing, no personal remedy is coming for your “normal” punishments, and we certainly don’t talk about negative effects on society from law. So there it is: we ignore three quarters of the information and causation for our self-analysis. And so, Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Man? We don’t! And we clearly don’t want to know.

Three quarters.

No wonder I avoided drawing it out for so long. Ouch.

There is interplay, extreme abuse easily hides among “normal” abuse, as I said, when I was young, a screaming child brought no curious saviours, it was normal to spank and normal to hear a child screaming. We were surely only hearing lessons, not beating or more. But . . . rationally, scientifically. You can’t use a “deterrent” and then declare it harmless! If it’s harmless, prithee, where is the deterrent?

Punishment makes us quite stupid. It’s not harmless, simple. See? Saved you from that very stupid trap right there.

The harm, the fact of the actual implementation of the supposed “deterrents,” that is half of our possible knowledge regarding ourselves, much of our bad feelings and much of our anger and aggression, this is what AST cannot seem to get through humanity’s thick skull. Calling most of it “legal,” or “normal,” doesn’t stop the cause and effect, you poor, stupid, abused apes!

Meant with love, harsh truth for my fam, I mean unless you happen to be rich. Then adjust the list accordingly.

Calling most of it “legal,” or “normal,” doesn’t stop the cause and effect, Mom! That isn’t better, is it. Harsh truths are harsh, no way around it. Teacher? No, don’t go after Mom, don’t go after teachers . . . cops are an extreme, obvious case. I’m looking for something a little less ham-handed, but really, it’s all of us, in most of our roles, isn’t it. AST tries very hard not to engage in Us and Them stuff. It’s pretty much all of us. The exceptions aren’t affecting the world much, at least not right now.

I’ve talked about this word too long, I have completely forgotten how this conversation is supposed to begin, but punishment is abuse, with a social waiver, “good” abuse, we say, and we only count its downsides in the most extreme failures, while the downsides are, well, I’ll get expansive again. The downsides are we look so bad, anyone would believe some god made us awful on purpose, among other things.

The downsides are pain, propagated endlessly, a huge, repressed and ignored reservoir of anger and pain we all carry that, as I say in the Conflict Theory, drives us forever to hatred and war.

OK. Breaking the “short” rule a little, we’ll stop.

Really, this one and the next one, “abuse,” are one idea, I hope if you don’t read the whole series, at least you don’t read this one without seeing the next one, the other half of this thought. Thanks.

Jeff

May 3rd., 2022

AST and the Cause

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I need to place us in context. When you talk about the medical model, the school model, I’m melting down. Those models are the parenting model, and abuse is the social model, the parenting model. Everyone needs to be anti-spanking, anti-punishment or things don’t change for anyone. Spanking is abuser-making, and acceptance can be difficult for the hurt. We must be allies to all children, even to the children of the masters of the universe, or we simply grow a new crop of abusers.

We are not the only group who is abused, many groups are abused, and all appeal to be exempted from the flood of abuse, I mean, rightly so, of course.

But this is not our problem – wait.

I mean, we didn’t make this problem.

It may indeed be our problem to solve – that’s one theory, right, that the diversity of the human brain is the adaptability of the human species, that it is some divergent mind that is always finding the new way forward. In that sense, perhaps this is indeed our job to solve it – but still, the problem isn’t part of us. It is very much part of general society, isn’t it? There is some dominant group, always, and all smaller groups get the smelly end, always, right?

Isn’t that the real problem?

Honestly, I have always felt it was my problem to solve, see something, say something, and I seem to be the only one who sees it. Again, it may indeed be autistic people’s problem to solve, and . . . and I’m sorry. I diverge from the divergent too, I guess. It seems unpopular to imagine a larger problem, I mean, that makes some sense,  the Cause is already an umbrella, it is the whole conversation for its members, of course. I’m sorry. The universe is an onion, and the layers are connected. If the conversation ends somewhere, that line isn’t real and true, it’s a social construction at best. The universe and life do not stay in-category.

Meaning, you can’t really speak the truth when you must “stay on topic.” If we abused ourselves, we would be the topic, not the case, or not the relevant case, we seem to be the topic when we are not the problem here, every group does. Again, we are not the only abused group.

I spent my life on the attempt to understand this larger, all-group problem. I knew I was odd, I just thought I was clever and lucky, I had an insight, a gift or a curse of some kind. I had done it, pretty much had my understanding of the problem before I had a child get diagnosed ASD and then it started to sink in about me. But not before I gave myself a rare, autistic level understanding of abuse and the mythical Human Nature. It’s been a good theory, things get clearer, more things get explained – finding out I’m autistic hardly hurts it, it’s that good. Worried me for a bit there, I admit.

It’s an answer to “why the abuse?” the question every group, and frankly every person asks but only rhetorically – really, no-one is surprised. That’s the Human Nature myth: no matter how badly they behave, no explanation is really required. ABA torture of children? Meh, dumb doctors. No reason! They just don’t know any better, and when people don’t know, of course they torture children! This is the explanatory power of Human Nature, no horror is “unnatural.” Of course.

The answer is punishment turns bad to good.

They think it’s good, threats and force, they think when their children survive it and go off to war, looking for strangers to kill, that this is “good.”

It’s what “punishment” means, bad is good, a deterrent is magic that turns bad abuse to good . . . good what? Teaching? – but it colours all identical looking abuse forever. Wars are advertised to “teach them a lesson.” The NRA tried to bring the primary schoolers’ behaviour into their defense about Newtown. Not kidding. The bad guys already know what I try to tell the libchallengeds, that we have already bought the false principle and can therefore buy it in almost any sick form whatsoever.

Not kidding.

I want us all to remember, we are asking for an end to our abuse – and their entire system is abuse, they do it to their own children on the regular. We are never going to reach smug happy abuse survivors that their abuse is a problem, they are proud of how strong it has made them – strong means mean. Aggressive and insensitive. Your “problem” is their one size fits all solution, discipline and strength, and here’s the rub – we have to stop them doing it to themselves first, or they are never going to hear anyone.

I climb the walls listening to people speak as if the abuse happens by accident, and people only have to be told. It is our entire system. It is going to take more than a leaflet campaign.

We want to do this not just to save ourselves, but everyone. The ways that we want to teach, the ways of treating us and dealing with us, people need to learn that for everyone, and that means understanding that the bad stuff happens from error and will, not by accident or automatically – and not because of anything about us as a group, but because it is the forever policy of mainstream human society. The magical Human Nature ends all inquiry, and if we are not allowed to question why the abuse, then we are not being effective, we are simply pulling babies out of the river and not minding that society throws all of its babies in the river and more importantly, not stopping it.

I’m autistic and I know it now – but spanking is still the First Cause of all human problems. It is our job to fix it, perhaps, because the abuse fails to convert the same number of the ND to its cause than it does the rest of the world, and that immunity is our superpower, maybe.

Jeff

May 2nd., 2022

Redefinitions 11 – AST VS Popular Memes, Racism

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

Redefinitions – 11. Racism

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST, “Racism”

Honestly, see the above.

I see Critical Race Theory as a subset of Antisocialization Theory, I see racial violence and inequity as antisocialized people seeking an outlet among an out-group, and although there has been some peace and multiculturalism here and then, it has mostly been a fairly safe bet to take it out on an obvious, visible Other.

Racism is AST, it is earning a load of bad feelings among “our own” people, family, work, social structures and burdens, and designating some visible Other as a legitimate target upon which to unload them. This dynamic is real, rather biological in that it is driven by pain, and it doesn’t matter as much as we hope it does if a somewhat tortured person is educated; they still need an outlet when put under pressure. Why would an education help that?

It’s not education that makes people racist either, people put upon and abused don’t need to be told, they will actively seek a legitimate target. The liberals think the parents teach it, they may, but they don’t have to, all they have to do is abuse, and racism is sort of automatic. Violence becomes automatic, and race signals “other” to an angry mind.

Of course, in the way that CRT is anathema to racists, so too is AST to everyone.

In the good cop/bad cop analogy, the good cop (Mom, to the cis?) spanks the kids to teach you manners and to not break things and such and the bad cop (Dad, to the cis) may admit violence doesn’t teach etiquette but tells you the secret: it makes you strong. I agree: strong enough to start patrolling your borders, looking for trouble. Strong enough to hold a charge. If you’re too “strong,” though, if you can’t hold it in until the next war, there are always wars at home, crimes to do, racism to perpetrate. Many of the strongest spend time in prison.

When you’re just right, the Goldilocks effect, you wait for the war. When you’re just right, perfectly antisocial, your deflective violence happens in broad daylight and your peers love you. You’re a stand up guy, for the criminal gang that is “your people.” You “support the troops.” And the cops. That’s AST.

 If AST is what drives us to war, then CRT is the always war at home. I assume the racists have it harder at home, they can’t hold it in and their war never ends. CRT is mostly that there are ways for racists to deflect on both sides of the law, some go to prison, some run the prisons, overly antisocialized, pushed too far, and melting down in public, to cheers for their antisocial policies. Isn’t he strong.

There’s a war on, don’t you feel.

Jeff

May 1st., 2022

Redefinitions 2 – AST vs Popular Memes, Social Life

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Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

Redefinitions – 2. Social Life

AST, a definition:

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of Conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” not an accident and not irony, we are always seeing this, to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of Conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first few entries:

AST “Social Life”

On the one hand, I am a contrarian and everything rings wrong to me, and no-one will say the thing I try to debunk, things unsaid are more difficult to disprove. In this light, knowing it’s weak at this stage of our lessons, I say: we think “social,” means the positive thing, perhaps “prosocial.” It’s the generic word, it encompasses all things, prosocial things, antisocial things, and neutral things, I suppose, asocial stuff, but you might not pick that up in casual conversation.

Antisocial is a problem, prosocial is rarely spoken, we use “social,” for that, social, in it’s street level, social sort of use and meaning, means positive interaction, our social world is our community, friends and family, like that. Being social is interchangeable with being sociable, generally. Again, it is always my sense, my interpretation of a social meme that I am forever trying to critique, and I lose everyone right there, I think, no-one will take the responsibility for a conflation like this, not enough to defend it, and certainly no-one can promise to change such a vague thing.

Will you allow it, may I continue, making my case against “we think “social” is all good?”

LOL – it’s the court of the internet, silence indicates assent and I’m not listening, Princess Bride meme.

But there’s the dark side to being social, we are prosocial to our friends and antisocial to enemies and probably strangers. To “be social” is to draw the line and arrange people on one side of it or the other. It is to choose, to . . . loaded word, discriminate, meant literally and technically, generically, not the specific meaning today in our current conversations about racism and hate. The sorting function. I mean, it’s the thing, the same thing, the very thing, and if we could stop it all, we’d stop that too.

There is another conflation, a smaller one I need to mention, about the term, “social creature,” and variants. I think when we talk about the wildebeest or a herd animal, it means the positive thing, “social creature” for herds seems to mean they all get along, except you know, for the rut and whatnot. For us, it’s all of it, we are more properly a “group social” creature, perhaps, get along with some, in conflict with others. For the group social animal, “social,” means all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Cool?

We are having trouble separating things, our social life is structured with the group problems, structured around the situation, the conflict, and our lifestyle now requires the out-group, the enemy, and our best prosocial morality is predicated on an evil, antisocial Other. The movie trope is true: lacking a real enemy, like after Cyrus’ foes were all assimilated, not sure he did this, but we do – we create them, out of thin air. Every moral lesson needs a bad guy.

In this sense, it is AST’s position that our rough controls, the rules (threats) and punishments make us more antisocial, better adapted for a life of conflict. AST is ironic, or rather life without it is, in that the deterrents we apply to make us “good,” are weak, virtual things, while the threat and abuse of actual punishments make us “bad,” all day long, antisocial. I think the social consensus no-one has to defend is that yes, this is what we do, to be strong, to defend from other nations, yes, this means life and that is our foundation for our morality.

I get it.

But they tell the same story. Yours is a one-group morality and has zero control on war. Causes them all, in point of fact. Look how in its extreme versions, it shows up as a death cult instead.

There’s a genetic component, environmental control of genes that help in the event of an abusive environment, so called fighting genes or something similar. AST’s position is that we have hacked these genes, providing the environment to control the genetic choice – through discipline, through the ritualized abuse we call spanking.

This looks like a positive feedback loop to me, select a gene, activate it, select it again . . . which I worry is also the AST Theory of Conflict, that this feedback loop goes to thermal runaway in the world every ninety years or so. Ouch. Sorry.

Jeff

April 29th., 2022

Redefinitions 1 – AST vs Popular Memes, Human Nature

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

Still having problems finding a way into AST for folks, this will be attempt number I don’t know any more, another series, I suppose. The plan is to keep them short and manageable, hope to make the point with a barrage from many angles. I’ll start with the definition for AST – here’s the first, it means Antisocialization Theory – and then how it alters the narrative of a number of topics.

AST redefines everything, but we’ll try to show how, specifically, for this list of ideas:

human nature

social life

punishment

abuse

anger

empathy

relatedness theory

evolution

strength

resilience

etc.

Oh, forgot some (and this will be a feature):

racism

trauma and healing, psychology

attention

culture, tradition

control

Redefinitions – 1. Human Nature

AST, a Definition

AST is the theory of our hurt, the human science of not deterrent and socialization, but of abuse, punitive and otherwise, and our antisocialization, which long word means exactly what it sounds like it means: to have been made antisocial. It is about the dark side of our social control, the stuff we supposedly don’t want to happen, beyond that the person maybe did what they were bloody well told.

The AST Theory of Conflict states that the failures and ostensibly unintended consequences of our rough control are deeply and vastly consequential in human life, and its author can get very expansive, imagining it to be the post powerful and destructive force driving us.

The central idea is that structures and ways of being within the human social group – laws and punishments, ordeals, etc., –  add up to pain and trauma for the individual, while laws prohibit simple reactive violence and simple revenge, and so the individual is “charged” with bad feelings, antisocialized and looking for a fight they are allowed to have. The group’s leadership – administrators of the law – can then exploit this reservoir of anger, point it at someone and allow the citizens the “freedom,” – not an accident and not irony, this word choice, we are always seeing this – to deflect and unload their frustrations.

AST asks you to note, that our own people frustrate us, and exploit our frustrations at will in this system, using us to abuse some Other, some human group in a war or a pogrom, or an apartheid. That is what I call the AST theory of Conflict, weaponized by our own, to be discharged in some group conflict.

Hmm. Not sure if that will be the one I use every time, but I like it for our first entry:

AST and “Human Nature”

First – fooled ya, there’s no such thing, AST doesn’t have that. AST needs a reason that humans do bad things, while “human nature” would seem to state that no matter what horrors we perpetrate, no explanation is required: of course genocides. Whaddayamean, “why?” “Human Nature!”

“Natures,” – “essences,” aren’t a thing, not a meaningful actual thing. It’s a made up premise from thousands of years ago. I mean, sure it’s the foundation of all human society and law, but that doesn’t make it true, that’s just the twin fallacies of consensus and tradition. I have a speech about language and neural pathways, that your neural pathways don’t change every time you learn a new word, that mostly new words only re-label old paths – and “genetically determined” or “genetic legacy,” is the new label for “human nature,” which perhaps is a new label for Original Sin.

This function makes it hard to change. We know about things that grow and change, so we surely have a circuit to understand evolution, but I guess it’s not yet the superhighway the “human nature” one is? It’s hard to change, our thoughts want to use the main road or something.

“Genetic legacy,” is antithetical to evolution, it’s used where “human nature” would be used, when it’s time to say “that’s just the way it is,” – when evolution is supposed to mean nothing “is” the way it is for long, everything is becoming something and stopping being something else, ‘natures,’ and ‘determinations,’ are exactly not the point. An evolving creature doesn’t make excuses about what it “is,” it actively adapts, it reaches for the next thing to be. That’s what happens when a real creature adapts to actual reality.

It’s not so clear that’s us, I admit. But the false binary, formerly “human nature,” vs the blank slate is now presented as “genetics” vs the blank slate, and they have their proof, it’s not a blank slate, I get it, there are specific genetics in place – my answer is, yes, not blank, yes, an operating system – still not a “nature,” still not a static thing, still not an excuse! And there is environmental control of genetic options! Even if the genesuite was static (it’s not), are every one of its options “just the way it is?”

The language is not bad, but the thought isn’t up to it.

AST doesn’t need to bust the “natures” myth, Darwin did that, or he tried, we’re still trying. Like I say, change is hard. The problem is, it’s never busted, no-one loses it, “human nature” is our last idea, still there, underneath all of our education, the last stop as our minds trail off, faced with evil we cannot otherwise explain, “bah, human nature.” AST doesn’t stop at rhetorical roadblocks, AST has a rule, no “human nature.” You must explain the behaviour, with science, here on earth, no matter that it’s evil, of course, especially because it’s evil.

AST hates to make threats, but “human nature” seems to keep producing global violent meltdowns and insists there’s nothing for it, don’t even try. That myth is just going to let us kill everything, ourselves not least. You need AST. OK, that’s not enough to get anything, but that, I’m afraid that really is “just the way it is,” LOL.

More to come.

Jeff

April 28th., 2022

AST Genes

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AST is conversion therapy for NT people, and they all believe it will work for anything, because it does “work” for them – poor definition of “works,” as always, of course, but it does something for them, it sets those epigenetic options. For the NT, abuse is indeed a stimulus with a predictable (if misinterpreted and unconscious) result.

The ABA argument, it’s my argument about spanking and police, same for same, except complicated by the fact that the abuse does seem to “work” for the NT, to the NT. I worry that the ND seem to agree with the NT about that, that the NT’s system “works” for them, and only fails the divergent, and I am certain that this is not the case (or, again, that “works,” means something we could all live better without).

So now I’m thinking that AST is a behaviour and a genesuite, just one not everyone has, but it’s one that is self protective and self-propagating and seems destined to drift through the entire population rather than be selected out, a successful mutation. What do they call one that saturates, that leaves no organism untouched, I forget, is there a name for that? I worried AST was one such when I thought it was universal, before neurodivergence entered my mind and the equation, and now, perhaps I worry less, and it seems the whole world will end before this saturation would ever be reached anyhow. But no, AST perhaps doesn’t require saturation, it has a strategy for the “non-compliant” (sorry, horrible term, “their” term, AST’s term – I know, another three letter acronym’s term, ABA’s. I don’t say it as a cop or a nurse, AST’s “strategy,” not mine) already, same strategy it has for everything.

Not an endorsement.

Perhaps there is some room between, I keep coming up against this with AST, that I am describing something that is both “biological,” and “behavioural/cultural”, the space between, where these things interact, meaning not all common problematic genes drift to saturation, that in the space between random and universal, perhaps there is sometimes a control mechanism, even for a trait that violently imposes itself upon the world?

AST is the control.

I have said, it’s both, genes, and the environment, which, we control our environment, so “environment” is “behaviour” to AST, it is both, genes and behaviour, that it is in the behaviour . . . phase? Aspect? The behaving time, no, just in the behaviour, in the behaving that we get to attempt to exercise some free will and make adjustments. Ah, I guess it’s been some time since I’ve spelled this out for myself, but it was always the point of AST, that if we behave less violently, we will become less violent, if people generally get less rough with one another, with their kids mostly, the next generation will grow up less prone to violence. AST simply endeavors to prove the old adage that violence breeds violence and tries to make it matter to people – even your violence. Even your dear old mother’s violence breeds violence.

Is all this not contained in the phrase “there is environmental control of genes?” Imagine knowing this soundbite and ever saying again, “Bah. Human nature.” Folks are very compartmentalized.

I’m having this odd idea, all genes aren’t selfish, not as selfish, perhaps most are selfish in an enlightened, sustainable way, but that our fellow Dr. Dawkins has perhaps been reading mostly the AST genes, I mean, if he has managed to explain our unsustainable human ways with genes at all. I hate to throw out work, perhaps it only wants a bit of a tweak, and to be said from a different angle, in a different context. I’m having a lot of random thoughts as neurodivergence makes its way though my mind, into all the places – one just now, that if the AST genesuite is not present or available in the autistic, is it in there still anyway, inactive and not activatable – as some of that “junk DNA” we hear about? Is one individual’s junk maybe working in another? A known thing, in general DNA terms, I guess?

I suppose if AST is a genesuite, then the NT world will frame this as the divergent lacking something, but I assume they have searched for autistic genes and come up empty – I wonder if anyone has thought to turn the search over, look for the gene that makes the difference in the NT, my AST genes, which probably include things they have called “warrior alleles,” among an unknown number and types of others. Perhaps one or more of those sort of alleles that have been suggested could be viewed as markers for AST, correlations. Over my head, of course. That would be too easy and too clear, that is not real life in the world of genetics, I don’t think.

And anyway the point isn’t to find the evil gene and weed it out, the point is to stop activating it, and perhaps identifying something about these genes will help us see when we’ve managed to set the option the other way – but if we never learn any of the details and simply stop with the forever socialized abuse, stop intentionally choosing the bad option, that will solve the problem.

I only worry that it needs a gene to make people see it, some sort of proof from the microscope. Again, it’s obvious to this now obviously divergent mind, as soon as I learned of the environmental control of genes, having already had some insight about punishment and abuse being identical, there it was, I don’t know how humankind suspends their disbelief about it, but again, that’s the whole point, most folks don’t see the simple logic in it that I do, we are so different, you and I, we really are.

Jeff

April 11th., 2022

I suppose this is a continuation of this one, in the personal blog:

Late Boomer

The Definition of Horseshoe Theory Insanity

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First, the meme, the social media political version: that’s where Left and Right, in their extremes meet as authoritarian dictatorships, the idea is, you go too far Right, you get a dictatorship, you go too far Left, same thing, and they point for the Left ones, to China, and past Russia, which, apparently still and always a dictatorship, but today a far Right one? I guess they leapt the gap in the circle, the open end of the horseshoe?

I mean, I’ve been saying they did that straight away, at least with Stalin, I’ve had the stance that all dictatorships are far Right, that Right means authoritarian.

But that’s too simple, a bit of a leap for us, isn’t it?

And also, these nations would argue, and some still do call themselves communist, despite existing as hierarchies complete with leaders and police and such . . . so it’s better to say that Left or Right, antisocialization theory gets us all. It is more meaningful, it’s a thing we can move on with and build on, if we see that laws and punishments drive people towards conflict and war, whether the laws were drafted by communists “for the collective good,” or by capitalists, to “protect the powers and structures of civilization,” that it is not the particular ideology reflected in the law that does this, but rather the bludgeon behind law generally that does.

That the means do not justify the ideological end, that rather, this is a real, causative, scientific world where one thing leads to another and so the means create the end, of course, and the bludgeon of punishments always create the same ends: conflict, crime, police, war.

This is Horseshoe Theory: same bullshit, regardless of the ideology of the parent with the rolling pin or the cop with the baton, a beating is a beating is a beating.

I think, given the situation, that humans do this social control thing, that the beatings are not likely to stop soon, that the collective nations will slide to the Right, that the current Chinese communism is very different from Marx’s dream, I mean, I think the beatings create the situation here, I think no society can stay collective if folks are hurting each other, I suspect collectivism requires a rejection of antisocialization generally, we can’t have it both ways. So called “social control” controls one thing only, and results in the same thing, always: this human that you see now.

All the violent social control has already been applied, and this is you: look at the world. That’s what it does. East vs West, equally, identically at war, police everywhere.

There’s a meme, “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people,” and I have one, same, I don’t know how to explain to you that the means are the ends, that the means make the ends, that you can’t simply apply one kind of means and ask for different ends, whatever ends you say.

I mean, I know you know it about golf, as a sports metaphor.

Jeff

March 22, 2022

This is Hell

Jeff/neighsayer3 Comments

Hi, welcome to Hell. First time?

Well, this is Hell, and I’m Jeff, I’m the demon assigned to remind you constantly that it’s nobody’s fault but yours that you’re here. I’m sorry, for what it’s worth; this is Hell and no-one is happy, not you, not us, not even management.

I mean, logically. This is the afterlife. I know, I know, you thought this was life. So did I for a minute there but hear me out. You’ll see how that couldn’t possibly be the case.

First, I don’t know that you believe in all that, the premise, I didn’t really believe it either, but that was when I thought this was life. From here, I need to re-evaluate, it’s not quite the same leap of faith from here! From here, it’s not such a hard case to make. If you are a Christian sort, if you do approach life from this premise, judgment, Heaven and Hell, then perhaps I am not altogether wittingly making a serious argument and if so, I apologize in advance for failing at that level. If like me, you are more of just a north American and a cultural Christian, call it metaphor if you must, but it’s more than that too.

Hell is where you go if you’ve been bad, right?

And weren’t you born bad, didn’t the judgment happen before, as part of the same premise? You know what I’m talking about, Christian Original Sin, or the generic nasty Human Nature.

I understand that for the Christians, Jesus solves this riddle, this isn’t Hell, it’s more like Purgatory, you were created and judged as bad, you can’t perhaps just choose good yourself and override your Maker, but you can choose Jesus, who forgives. For the cultural Christians – and Christian believers are cultural Christians also, they can perhaps see the picture I’m trying to paint for the purely cultural ones too – that for the unsaved, there isn’t an escape, you’re bad and either forgiven or not, and if we accept the judgment and decide that we were created as bad, no choice – then by this cultural Christian premise and context, this is not our life, where there is free will and we get to choose from good and evil, this is the logical afterlife, where our choices have already been made.

And we do, mostly, almost universally, accept the judgment. While the modern, smart-assed materialists consider the escape, salvation to be ridiculous religious fantasy, that they have moved beyond sacrifice and spirits, they almost to a person accept and endorse the rest of the premise, up to the point where we all fail judgment except that some escape, this is not where we are alive and free and making meaningful moral choices.

 And it’s not Heaven, is it?

I see more prisons than I would expect in Heaven, for starters.

I imagine much less violence in Heaven, but rather than seeing people with the hate removed and love and peace in their hearts, the reward for having done the impossible and been good, rather, I see an elaborate system of moral gaslighting that absolutely insures violence forever repeating, an insanely complicated system of “morals” and laws in which violence is a sacred cure and not one of the crimes at all. When there is a fire, our world and Hell look identical, an all encompassing system of punishment and pain – plus fire.

I imagine we don’t have to be strong in Heaven, that Heaven doesn’t have all the awful things we have to be strong for, I like to think it’s a good life in Heaven even if you do weaken. I assume nothing tries to kill you and so makes you stronger in the sweet by and by. This is not that, is it?

Not even close. Just make the fires of Hell the obvious metaphor for violence and it’s all true, even the forever part, because there is no end to the foolishness of fighting violence with violence, fire with fire and the effort is the very definition of Hell and gives no hope of an ending ever. In this premise, born bad, all the judgment and punishment, all the hate and strife is for naught and none of it makes anyone better, in the end, you are still human, still born to be bad, and endless violence for nothing, that too is a definition of a mythical place, also not Paradise.

Whups, almost ten minutes, I haven’t said it – and this is all on you, you did this to yourself.

I mean, it’s your premise, isn’t it?

Have a nice eternity, fool. I’ll be right here.

Jeff

Feb. 12th., 2022

No Spanked Atheists

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I wrote this on Twitter, didn’t think I was “writing,” or something, but it’s as least as good as most of the entries here. It’s the same, but there’s a little something new, I think.

Another Human Nature Thread:

An evil (avaricious, violent) Human Nature – is the fascist position on the question of Human Nature, or the question of ‘why are we humans this way.’ I mean, it’s everyone’s, but it’s theirs too. If you believe in it, you are on the same side of the question as they are, you are fascism ready in that sense, you – we, it’s almost ubiquitous – have the first prerequisite, the foundation.

It is religion. “Natures” are not a thing. It is the ubiquitous human religion, the foundation  of all things uniquely human, this . . . faith. “Human Nature,” it is our moral judgment of ourselves that enables all the evil we do to one another.

The Human Nature Question has faded – but not because Natures aren’t real. They’re still not, but it’s because we have our answer, the whole human world is on one side of a debate. What is on the other side?

The Tabula Rasa? All the causality, all the science is now in support of the only model anyone has. Evolution is just “how we got this Nature.”

No science, no institution seeks a reason why we should be this way, they have one already, Human Nature – why poke and prod?

I have read many,  many books, trying in vain to prove the negative, trying to find the author that doesn’t in the end, give it up to Human Nature. Brilliant people who “tried,” but never could go back to that first error and correct it, is all I’m finding. Maybe Trivers doesn’t say it. Bob seems comfortable in an unmoored conversation, I think he’s careful not to require it, but I’m not sure he’s fully replaced it. Maybe. I’m not smart enough to be ahead of him, obviously. Mad hubris to make it a question.

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, the full denial of Natures, in colour and Dolby, you know, fleshed out, what it means. It’s what Pinker maybe said he was after in the Blank Slate, but if he succeeded about the brain, he never approached the larger question. It was clear in the only mention of child-rearing that he was minimizing the power of it, made some analogy about dropping your phone, sometimes it breaks, sometimes it doesn’t.

As with specific religions, the question is this rule – an evil Human Nature – or real world causation? We are all living in the world of the rule now, can you see it, try it on? I know it seems like an obvious truth, people are awful, they certainly can be, but it is all empirical, it has to be, because we know platonic Natures aren’t a real thing. Truth, as Tim Rice said speaking as Pontius Pilate (I’m obsessing over JC Superstar at the moment), may simply be unchanging law, artificial, human made law. We have “eternal questions” because the gaslighted always do and always will, when we cannot apply reason and causality to our problems.

Let’s call this the end of the good part, the shareable part.

Of course, it’s hard not to believe it, hard not to accept the dogma of it, hard not to agree about an evil Human Nature when you are a spanked baby, when the source of life and love starts attacking you long before you can defend yourself. I think this experience provides the bias for believing it, and then we all share and amplify it all our lives, prove it to one another all day long. The lessons ring true, because the infantile experience is preverbal, buried, but sits waiting, a truth that has “always been there.”

Over and ouch. Can I get an Amen?

A couple of notes, because I like this rant enough to repeat it. One, I meant it in the most obvious, surface, unsophisticated and literal way, but “seems comfortable in an unmoored conversation” would be a lovely, Mark Twain polite way to call someone crazy, wouldn’t it? Not what I was doing, though. I’ll say, it’s an aspiration that someone might ever say it about me.

And that was new for me, the base religion idea. I want to get expansive – this is a way that “atheism is a religion too,” if it accepts the nasty Human Nature as a matter of no dispute, this is a way that there really aren’t many atheists, especially in foxholes, where the evidence overwhelmingly supports such an assessment. I mean, I suppose that to be an atheist or a materialist in this sense, a non-believer in our abuse deserving Natures, perhaps means even more than matters of immaterial beings, I mean of course it does.

Hmmm . . . good morning.

That was new too, about the Human Nature Question. You know they SAY the question dried up in their hands and blew away, disappeared into a million smaller questions, more meaningful and concrete questions – this is basically saying that the Nature is in the details, the Nature – the impossible, not a real deal thing – is behind many, many questions, and as I say, when they too run out of facts, nearly all of them pull Human Nature out in the end. Eternal recurrence, like Moe throwing Barney out of the bar, they turn around and there it is behind them. And the judgment remains, it’s no longer Selfish Man, but it’s the Gene now, and surprise – still selfish.

Who predicted the Generous Gene? Who would believe it? Our belief in our undeserving Natures is behind the science that identifies genes. The Question has not changed or morphed – we just stopped asking it, because when only one answer is permitted the question soon disappears. Maybe people used to know it was religion, but now it’s bloody science too?

Ha! Back up a few, this is the way in which science is merely another church again, if it proceeds from the fictional side of the Human Nature Question.

AST is the next “correct” theory because it makes sense of the previously mysterious and of conflicts in common wisdom. I’m an atheist, I am supposed to say it is NOT just another religion or a church, I know the public discourse – but AST is such a better theory, such a better context, that it explains it all, both sides of a popular debate that is deadlocked by myth.

A better theory.

Jeff,

Feb. 8th., 2022

Steal This Blog

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Don’t misrepresent me, I’ll spend my remaining years and my pension fighting you if you turn it around on me. I’ve had quite enough of that in real life, plus I live on the internet.

But represent me with something close to faithfulness, share me, quote me, plagiarise me, please! Mention my name, but honestly, if you want to impress someone and it might, if it helps – sure, tell them you invented the word ‘antisocialize.’ It would be like sock accounts and supportive bots, it will magnify the message.

Use my word, the more you think it, the more you see it, the more you say it, the more real things get. I mean, mention my name if they ask, but it’s not going to get you any points, I’m the smallest of nobodies, and I’m sorry for what happens if you mention my name to someone who happens to know me too! I’m best as nobody anyways.

I’m saying, Antisocialization Theory is free to the public, like insulin is supposed to be. I want to say “open source,” but I cannot, as near as I can tell no-one but the founder here understands the project and open sourcing will have it infected with “strength” instantly. The extreme curation must continue, as I say, twist my words with entirely normal social memes like strength and resilience and I will fight you to the end!

But if you get it, share it.

A socialist, in the broadest, most generic sense, a cooperative society must eschew strength, we must love the weak and the unable. Strength is division and conflict and Hell and my hashtag is #weaktogether. Strength is cruelty and morality is strength and it’s all gaslighting because in the end we know the result is far from any moral paradise, more like the reverse.

Human beings invented morality and in no time at all destroyed the world. “Strength” is what you need to do hard things, bad things. This is long perspective, with the details wiped away, thinking straight requires that, you have to compare the details against the whole – and the whole says your sacred strength is the cause of the disaster, not a prophylaxis, because nobody loves weakness and no-one is weak and the strong are doing all the work anyway, by scientific definition, work and force and strength are nearly synonymous.

Jeff

Dec. 6th., 2021