A THREAT RECOGNITION DESERT
So I want to discuss the utter lack of fear that I see in our society – a lack of situational awareness, a lack of a sense of danger. This, BTW, applies to both individuals, as well as society, as they ritually intone: Oh, that’s just not possible. The stable world people have is a forever world, and there’s no room in their minds that anything seriously bad could happen to themselves or their society… despite the history or experiences of people they know. They have stability privilege.
This applies not only societally but on an individual bases as well. Remember my friend, whom I discussed in A Crisis of Trust, whose glib dismissals of the possibility that government might not be trustworthy wrecked a friendship of over 30 years? As Jesse Kelly said the other night, time to triage your relationships – not everyone can be saved. Do not doubt that these same people who scoff at the possibility of food shortages, economic collapse, etc., will be the first people knocking at your door – begging for food, etc., from the preps you’ve set aside – when the fecal matter hits the air motivator. And if you refuse, they’ll be furious. Not just furious that they, the grasshoppers, are being denied that which they believe is their due… but subconsciously furious that you were right and they were wrong. Vanity is the devil’s favorite sin.
So, a story about a lack of fear. Back in college there was a grisly murder discovered in one of the parking lots of a local mall over a summer – no suspects ever arrested AFAIK (as far as I know) even now, certainly not then. A young woman, raped, beaten, murdered, and dismembered, then left in a car – as horrific as you can get. Believe me, it was the talk of the campus. Yet all that school year I would see women walking around, alone, late at night and often with headphones on, utterly oblivious to their surroundings. I recall one rather shapely blonde in a halter top and short-shorts, easily later than 11 PM, behind whom I walked for some time (ok, admiring the view 😉) – headphones on and so loud in her ears, I could hear it from a distance. Certainly, she couldn’t hear anything above that Walkman. Not once did she look around to see who might be about her. Zero situational awareness; zero consideration that the world might not be a perfect and safe paradise; and zero awareness she was being followed (by me, albeit not intentionally – we simply had a similar path for a significant time).
I see similar things with women at the grocery store wearing their work IDs with their full names plus workplace shown or, in one case, a teenage girl with her mother, having her driver’s license with name and address clearly visible in a neck pouch holder. I did speak to them and pointed out the daughter’s exposed information, making the point that “I’m harmless; someone else might not be.” The mother, who clearly had not thought a thing about it, told her daughter to turn the license around in the pouch to conceal that information.
Aside: I’ve started playing Kim’s Game with my kids to build observational skills. I’ve already taught them to never walk into a place without looking for exits and knowing how they might walk out (anecdote: for a while, I taught at a local university; right after a school shooting I started the class by telling them to look straight at me, and then I asked how they might escape if there was a shooter in the hall outside… not one person knew that there was an exit at the top back of the auditorium). I read the excellent book Left of Bang and try to spoon small lessons to them about profiling and establishing situational baselines. At the mall, I never sit in the center of the food court but only at the edge – for a faster potential exit, and I’ve told them why I do that. Another thing I’ve told them is that if we’re driving and I ever say, “get down, get small,” it means for them to crouch down into the seat footwell, ass to the outside, and curl into as small a ball as they can… in case we encounter a BLM or other protest. If they’re going to get shot, better in the ass than the head. Small things, but it’s best to ingrain a survival mindset now.
Similarly, women who, despite news like this (quote and picture, below, come from this article), the spiraling rape stats and myriad other incidents, sexual or not, across Europe still push for more migrants:
THE WOMAN DIED WHILE BEING RAPED. POLICE SAY THE PERPETRATOR CONTINUED TO RAPE THE WOMAN’S CORPSE WELL AFTER SHE HAD DIED. THE SOMALIAN WAS APPREHENDED BY THE POLICE WHILE STILL IN THE ACT OF RAPING THE MURDERED WOMAN.
Let us not forget Tommy Robinson’s documentary The Rape of Britain.
And within living memory of the Shoah (Holocaust) and the near annihilation of our people, the vast majority of fellow Jews in America want more refugees to America out of “Tikkun Olam” – healing the world – despite Synagogues in France (let alone elsewhere in Europe) needing armed guards 24/7 and even concertina wire atop newly-installed high fences with closed-circuit cameras for protection against those very same refugees. Like peoples across Europe, whether gays, women, or Jews, or just liberals-in-general, our civilization seems absolutely unable to see plain evidence before them of what happens when immigrants get brought in en masse.
There are threats that happen in the real-world life we live every day, and then there are THREATS, and as a civilization, we’ve seemingly lost the ability to differentiate between the two. Why?
THE ALLERGY ANALOGY
It is currently believed that the seeming rapid rise of allergies in the modern world is due to the fact that our hyper-clean societies, obsessed with sterilizing and cleaning and hand wipes and sanitizer and anti-bacterial everything, etc., deprive the child’s developing immune system of stimuli that enable it to learn to differentiate between genuine pathogenic threats and possibly-allergenic foods that, to prior generations, were just fine. One treatment I’ve read about for kids with multiple allergies is to send them to a farm environment to get exposed to, well, everything… not sure how that’s worked out, but it’s an interesting idea. But exposure is essential, e.g., in Israel there is a treat that’s like Cheetos but with peanut butter; Bamba is routinely given to children early on, and peanut allergies in Israel are virtually unheard of (I’m more partial to falafel sticks). Compare that real-world result on peanuts to the dire warnings our pediatrician gave us about peanut butter and how we needed to avoid peanuts and other nuts like Yersinia Pestis – fortunately, I didn’t listen and, for both kids, would routinely mix a little peanut butter into their feeding bottles. Now, “the Science” has changed, and the pediatrician said that was a good idea! Again, the critical point: a lack of stimulus creates an inability to differentiate between a real threat and something that is, in actuality, harmless. I think this is why so many “woke” people go so insane over minor things – they’ve lost the ability to differentiate between genuine threats and minor irritants that merely require growing a skin.
Another threat that is glibly ignored is tech. Like many in this world, I have a smartphone. I have never done Facebook, dabbled for a short while with Twitter, and now am on Gab and Telegram… and am weighing Truth Social. But I don’t do Pinterest, Instagram, Spotify, or whatever. I’m jealous of this guy (funny video, 2:56). “When the app is free, you’re the product.” If it weren’t for the camera to take pictures – not on Google Drive! – plus Telegram and Duolingo, I would go back to a dumb phone. Plus, GPS is useful from time to time, but I memorize routes… once or twice, and now I know it – unlike so many who rely on the GPS each and every time. It’s a tool, not a life.
Meanwhile, my technophile wife loaded a tracking program to my old phone without my permission, had the one on hers, and wanted to trade IDs so that we could know where the other was at all times – she was totally heedless of how this could be abused (especially surprising with her growing up in the USSR and under KGB surveillance all the time!). So I removed it. My current phone is password-protected, so she can’t pull that again.
But too many people live on their phones and are totally dependent and addicted to a tool that results in deprivation of human contact. This is, IMHO, one of the saddest cartoons critical of social media that I’ve ever seen.
I am a huge critic of the Internet of Things and regularly point out that we are putting electronics into things and connecting them together with virtually no thought to security – as evidenced by events, time and again, by the hacking of things like children’s toys that have been enabled with cameras, microphones, and a wireless connection. Or driverless cars; or a world where robots and AI have taken over virtually all labor – no thought, no thought at all, seems evident to the hubris of this technological brilliance as to how utterly vulnerable civilization would then be to people who desire to bring it down; for example, by pulling the power plug on this brave new world (video, 7:12). It’s like the potential risks are not even a factor; the curve, in the minds of technophiles, only goes up forever. Consider an IoT oven that requires terms and conditions. It’s a frickin’ oven! And an IoT toothbrush??
And let us not forget other tech consequences. At a conference a few years ago, one of the speakers had a short video about his toddler daughter – raised on a tablet – who was exploring a paper magazine. Attempting to zoom in on the pages, having to physically flip the pages, she said the magazine was broken. Another video he showed was of an in-development robotic Alexa-like device reading a bedtime story to a child and my first thought was outrage. Where the living f*ck are the parents???
And as more and more things become electronic, remember a take-off on Arthur C. Clark’s Third Law:
Any technology, no matter how advanced, is indistinguishable from a brick when the power is off.
We’re letting our kids get used to short-attention span videos, dopamine-inducing games that captivate for hours and hours, and alienation from family & human relations. Consequences are already being seen:
Lesson two: In creating a safe and stable society, we’ve been so safe for so long that even in those with developed amygdalae, we’ve so little experience with genuine threats we ignore them and hyperinflate small irritants to the same level as actual dangers. We believe that nothing can change from this “new plateau” of stability contrary to all human history.
As I wrote to a friend in Israel who boasted, “We are undefeatable:”
SUCCESS BREEDS CONFIDENCE
CONTINUED SUCCESS BREEDS ARROGANCE
ARROGANCE BREEDS COMPLACENCY
COMPLACENCY BREEDS DISTRACTION
AND IT IS WHEN ONE IS DISTRACTED THAT ONE IS MOST VULNERABLE
A FOCUS ON THE “HEDONISTIC NOW”
I have two kids. I occasionally joke about being willing to sell them off for 50 cents a pound. A few nights ago as they were fighting over frickin’ nothing, I’d have discounted it to 25 cents a pound. But, of course, they’re my children and I’d never let anything happen to them. I’d like to have more, but with a Covidien wife (and possible genetic consequences) – plus some other issues – not in the cards. But they’re time, energy, and money black holes… time, energy, and money that I could easily allocate to other things. Except they’re my posterity, and I delight in time with them, seeing them grow and learn, etc. *smirk* Usually.
But I’ve met many couples who are so focused on the DINK lifestyle that they fail to carry on their bloodline. My older sister’s children will never have kids, so I think she dotes on mine as her surrogate grandchildren. My younger child’s music teacher is, likewise, childless by choice. As are others I know.
“Be fruitful and multiply,” says the Bible, yet the western world is doing the opposite. The decline in fertility has been a topic for discussion on many sites and by many people, including the notable Mark Steyn. His book America Alone discusses this, among many other topics. And I tell my kids they’re only alive because every single person before them had children, and that it is part of their obligation of gratitude to those ancestors that they need to create descendants.
But it is not just a hedonistic, immersed in abundance, live-for-the-moment philosophy that is behind the reduction of fertility – though that part of it is undeniable. Consider this Time Magazine cover:
We also know that sperm counts, particularly in the West, are decreasing.
Certainly there are many potential explanations to decreased fertility. Diet. Physical activity (or lack thereof – guilty!). The foil-hat brigades doubtless opining on surreptitious food additives, and I’m coming to consider the theory of chemtrails having a role as a possibility, though not-quite-yet proven to my standards (I’m writing about that in the forthcoming Thought Splinters, Part 4). Do remember, though:
(Image source)
And from the comments at the above link, this video:
But I will put forth the claim that fear and reproduction are linked.
Reproduction, the passing along of genes, is a fundamental drive; whether plant, animal, or whatever, this is perhaps THE fundamental imperative. When one lives in a dangerous environment, it stresses the body. Danger and stress require strength (and not just physical) to handle those stressors and dangers; just as testosterone drives strength development in men, the need for physical strength and stamina drive testosterone production. Testosterone also fuels the sex drive and sperm production. And while I’m not familiar with research on women specifically, I have read in multiple places that women – for all the talk of wanting a “sensitive new-age guy” – are actually drawn to “bad boys” that exude a cruder, masculine aura. Speaking of women and masculinity, especially in stressful times:
(Image source)
Men with higher testosterone levels are also more prone to be willing to fight to protect what they have; the flip side is also true – especially when our children are raised that “fighting never solves anything.” Well, actually, it does, and the truth of the quote below is made no less relevant because it’s from science fiction (link to a scene from the movie, 1:49; this quote is from the book, bolding added):
ANYONE WHO CLINGS TO THE HISTORICALLY UNTRUE AND THOROUGHLY IMMORAL DOCTRINE THAT VIOLENCE NEVER SETTLES ANYTHING I WOULD ADVISE TO CONJURE UP THE GHOSTS OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AND THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND LET THEM DEBATE IT. THE GHOST OF HITLER COULD REFEREE AND THE JURY MIGHT WELL BE THE DODO, THE GREAT AUK, AND THE PASSENGER PIGEON. VIOLENCE, NAKED FORCE, HAS SETTLED MORE ISSUES IN HISTORY THAN HAS ANY OTHER FACTOR, AND THE CONTRARY OPINION IS WISHFUL THINKING AT ITS WORST. BREEDS THAT FORGET THIS BASIC TRUTH HAVE ALWAYS PAID FOR IT WITH THEIR LIVES AND THEIR FREEDOMS.”
This jibes very well with the Theodore Roosevelt quote that I cited at the top of Part 1. No? We have indeed forgotten that basic truth, and are being replaced and outbred by cruder people who have not. And yet we don’t see the threat…
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