Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

There is no such thing as a clash of Civilizations. For one, there are no Civilizations. There is only one Civilization, and it is universal: The West.

But whereas its name, Occident, tells from which shore of the Hellespont it took flight, The West unites people from all ethnic or cultural origins in a common peaceful cooperation through the respect of individual rights. The Japanese robot-maker, the Indian software engineer, the Senegalese phone operator, the Chilean wine-maker or the Israeli gardener, all partake in our Occidental Civilization, that knows no limits and no discrimination except those of human accomplishment: one is what one creates.

Wretchard illustrates an essential principle sorely missed by all the beautiful souls who hate seeing evil so much that they'd rather put their head in the sand than do something, and take such pride out of it that they feel they can despise those who actually go out and fight evil. And I mean quite a lot of so called liberals, and also much too many libertarians. Law considered without law enforcement is a chimera. And neglecting law enforcement as trivial and subordinate to law is but rationalizing the previous case. Law enforcement has a cost; it has consequences; the means required to enforce law induce severe constraints on what law can effectively be in reality, as contrasted to what it purports to be in its official declaration; the consequences of a law are the effects its actual enforcement have, not the wishful cover stories displayed by whoever lobbies for the law. Confusing a human edict for a godly edict, thinking that some kind of formal utterance transubstantiates human words into divine words and change the very essence of the world... that's an anerism. Justice without Police, Peace without the means of War, social order without self-defense... they are the same delusionary principles, that in reality mean only one thing: the claim of the inalienable right of criminals to successfully attack their victims.

Absurdists, relativists, multiculturalists, leftists, anti-racists, socialists, etc., like to say that all human civilizations are equal. Well, if they are, either THIS is not civilization at all, or it is quite a dreadful civilization (Cám ơn Kae, Razib). As usual, the actual consequences of the absurdists' utterances is either to decree as civilization what is actually barbarianism, and thus institute the subjection of millions of the (more) civilized to the (relatively) barbarians; or it is to deny their humanity to the barbarians, and lead to the subjection and massacre of millions of innocents because they were born in the wrong families.

One of my favorite self-quotes is:

Racism consists in attributing to genetics what is due to memetics.

By denying the relevance of memetics, by claiming the collective right of populations to preserve their culture that deserves respect by imposing it on their individual members, so-called anti-racists are eminently racists, so-called liberals oppose basic individual liberties, and so-called progressists advocate the most abject regress to barbarianism.

Those who advocate barbarianism are criminals, who should be repressed without mercy. And I don't mean only those who act, but also those who sponsor crime and give instructions. Those who laud barbarianism and help it progress, who breed it with subsidies, who silence the defenders of civilization with censorship, are the complicits of barbaric crimes and the enemies of civilization; they also deserve to be repressed without mercy. And in neither case is this a matter of what family you were born in. It's a matter of individual choice between good and evil.

Civilization is universal. It is for everyone. So is barbarianism. Individual responsible choice of life despite collective oppression is not just the path to progress and civilization; it is progress and civilization. Let each individual choose, and enjoy or suffer the legitimate consequences. And let these consequences be the extirpation of the enemies of civilization.

A random correspondant argues against picking the least of two evils. Quote: you don't have to align yourself toward fighting the worst evil to be morally correct. if you're fighting evil you're fine Yeah sure. So you can help the greater evil prevail and feel morally justified. And he even acquiesces to this conclusion. That's moral bankruptcy. And I'm sorry to tell that this and the rest of his discourse sounded terribly like LRC to me: the very libertarian economists who should know better are not exempt from this failing.

Morality is about making choices between available opportunities; it is the very same as the Human Action of austrian economists. Thus, there is no good but the best available choice. Comparing outcomes to a pipe dream utopia, finding none to be good, calling everything evil, and then feeling justified in doing anything whatsoever, because whatever you do, you can construe one evil that you're fighting -- that's but a rationalization for abandoning any and all sense of morality. It's a trick to evade the necessity of examining moral options actually available in the context of the real world, instead of mere general abstract approximations thereof that are wantonly oblivious of the specific constraints of reality.

I repeat, morality is about making choices and directing behaviour in a world of actual choices and real phenomena. Anything that denies the nature of morality is anti-moral. A good choice is one that leads to a better world, as compared to other available choices. A bad choice is one that leads to a worse world, as compared to other available choices. This is why morality is based on economic reasoning, and why people who deny that morality is rooted in actual choices are doing accounting fallacies.

Gustavo's rant summarizes why universities are obsolete. But were they ever up-to-date? Steve Jobs suggests they never were. Paul Graham tries to tell how to make the most out of college, but ends up telling how to make the most, out of college.

Universities are loci of anti-asian racism, brainwashing by leftist loonies, and ignoble evil-worship. From Plato to catholic theology to communist worship to islamofascist propaganda, academia has always been the premier tool to promote totalitarianism through the annihilation of reason, or at least its subjection to unlimited Political Power.

I'm not sure whether Universities can be replaced completely by online solutions, but if they can't, it's more than time for some Hercules to clean these Augean Stables. The one and only necessary and sufficient measure: withdraw any interference by political power in education.

For Memorial Day, I leave the floor to Omar.

My friend Turion compared Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Ayn Rand (in French). Well, Ayn Rand certainly had a much more articulated philosophy, but let's admit Ayaan has a comparably tremendous courage in standing up for liberty. This reminds me of the following poem that I recently wrote in reply to a challenge to compose poetry at once, right after a discussion on Ayn Rand:

Proud, as the world crumbled
Alone she dared to raise
And when others mumbled
She called the Evil's ways

Update 1: Partial translation to English of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali interview mentioned by Turion (Cám ơn, LGF).

Update 2: An audio interview of AHA by the BBC (Cám ơn, LGF).

I had read other articles by Theodore Dalrymple before (thanks to MiF), and they were all good. So when GNXP announced this one, I read it at once, and I relished: An imaginary scandal.

A colleague of mine told me that according to an african friend (from which part of West Africa?), many african tales for little children feature as a hero a thief-crook, whose tricks are glorified and who wins in the end. I'm looking for corroboration of this information, if possible sample such tales, with metadata about the context in which these tales are told.

Les couloirs du métro annoncent Pharaon à l'institut du monde arabe, à grand renforts de sponsors étatiques et para-étatiques. Pourquoi pas Dalai Lama à l'institut du monde chinois? Chef Hutu, à l'institut du monde tutsi? Inca à l'institut du monde ibérique? Roi Champa à l'institut du monde vietnamien? Hannibal à l'institut du monde romain? Néanderthal à l'institut du monde Cro-Magnon? Et d'abord pourquoi un institut du monde arabe plutôt que d'aucun autre? Attention, si on laisse faire la vermine qui instigue une telle mascarade, dans quelques années, à l'institut du monde arabe, ce sera Premier ministre israëlien bientôt suivi de Président français. La collection a vocation à s'étendre autant qu'on la laissera faire.

Another important way in which americans are free and french are not: in public messages, whether in ads or in public venue regulations, the main way that people are enticed to do things, in the States, is you can do it, you can help preserve the environment, you can achieve something for yourself, etc. In France, it's you must, whether you like it or not, you cannot, because someone who knows better than you has decided it this way. Of course, this is more visible in public regulations than in private advertisements, since the latter always rely on the good will of the consumer. Still, even french ads more often than not resort to bad conscience and other forms of self-loathing. This is not something to be found in the States.

I greatly enjoyed driving on highway 101 between San Francisco and Mountain View. Part from the reason was the nice rental car. I liked its automatic gear box a lot, though I couldn't manage to use it till I had some passerby explain to me that the brake pedal also served as the clutch. All the americans I met were so very nice, except for a civil servant from MBTA (who was notably lacking niceness though without being rude). Reminds me of Japan -- however, though the japanese might have seemed even nicer, I couldn't understand what they were saying, whereas I can speak english and enjoy american niceness.

Aux ceusses de tous bords (j'en rencontre surtout mais pas exclusivement des anti-guerre) qui ont du mal à vouloir comprendre mon mu comme réponse aux questions sur la guerre en Irak, voici une n-ième clarification, élaborée suite à une discussion sur liberaux.org (quelques précédentes clarifications, entre autres: 1, 2, 3).

In my series of ideological analyses of popular shows, here is one about Troy, the latest movie, which I saw a few weeks ago, right before breaking up (Brad Pitt is a difficult rival to beat). Just like an earlier Troy movie, it takes sides with the Troyans, and strips the godly quarrel from the story, to make it kind of a realist and romantic war film. My friend David already did a nice review of the movie (in French; beware: spoilers), so I'll only add my opinion and a few more spoilers.

J'ai déjà publié sur ce sujet (voir ces articles: 1, 2, 3), mais suite à une intervention sur un forum, voilà un résumé.

Toutes les croix du cimetière ont été cassées à Guénange. Par des jeunes. On ne dit pas s'il y avait des étoiles de David et ce qu'il en est advenu. Le maire fait taire les médias pour ne pas effrayer les acheteurs potentiels de ses logements sociaux subventionnés et néanmoins à prix surévalués (bravo pour l'État entrepreneur immobilier). Pour que de telles choses ne se reproduisent pas, des mesures seront prises pour briser net l'extrémisme bouddhiste et le sectarisme randien.

mood: calm

music: The Cure - Killing An Arab

Pour remettre les pendules à l'heure quant à l'islam, religion de tolérance, voici quelques liens utiles.

Vert + Rouge = Brun.

Tout à l'heure, quand je m'assois dans le bus, deux quelconques beurettes d'une seizaine d'année discutent derrière moi. De retour de l'école, elles semblent commenter une nouvelle (réelle? prospective?) comme quoi l'Aïd-el-Kébir deviendrait jour férié en France, ainsi que le Yom Kippour. L'occasion pour moi de me rendre compte de visu (ou plutôt de auditu?) de l'état d'esprit de l'immigration maghrébine en France...

Historically, Parliaments have emerged as institutions to defend the interests of free men against the arbitrary power of the plundering raping pillaging burning fearmongering warlords who dubbed themselves the nobility. But with the fall of this loathed nobility, Parliaments, from a Counter-Power that they once were, became the very Political Power, and thus the main source of plunder, oppression, war and misery.

Well, we can see the same phenomenon happening with the European Union. It once was an institution that was useful as a way to reduce the political power of national parliaments and the evil of their various forms of protectionism and national socialism. But now, it is becoming a new super national political power of its own, promoting its own super protectionism and super national socialism.

As say hobbits: Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!