Accusations of Misogyny

On several forums, there have been feminists who accused me of being a misogynist. I find these claims to be completely ridiculous. I've dealt with misogynists. I've fought the misogynists. They all see me as a “male feminist,” as a “pussywhipped idiot” or as a “wanker” “sucking up” to women.

In no way am I a misogynist. I love my daughter. I love my mother. I've loved a number of women. I have spent a lot of time and energy deconstructing the lies of the misogynists, encountering in return very vicious reactions. I do not deserve to be portrayed in this light.

Yes, it's true, I do not subscribe to political correctness. That is because political correctness persecutes love and beauty while teaching women to be the very worst thing that they can be. In so doing, it attacks the best in women, to the point that it itself becomes very profoundly misogynistic. I've known wonderful women who kept getting maliciously attacked by the practicioners of political correctness; and standing up to political correctness, for me, is a labor of love.

One does not have to teach women to be vicious harpies in order to fight brutality and oppression against women. A good man would be against such things himself. That does not mean that he will support malicious and abusive behavior on the part of women. A jerk is a jerk, whatever the gender.

I neither support nor oppose either men or women. Both will always exist. I support good women and I support good men. I want men and women to work out beautiful relationships with one another. That will do more to fight violence and oppression against women than any amount of man-hating.

Both men and women are this: Human beings. That means, beings capable of choice; and that means choice both good and bad. Both men and women should be encouraged to act rightfully and be good to one another. The result will be a much happier arrangement than what we have either in case of patriarchy or in case of political correctness. And that means: Benefiting both the women and the men.

Clashes of Interests and Positive Middle Path

There are two kinds of conflicts that take place at the political level. One is the clash of values; the other is clash of interests. In debates such as ones surrounding death penalty, drugs and abortion, the clash is that of values. In matters concerning business and labor, or men and women, or technology and environment, the clash is that of interests.

It makes sense to approach these two kinds of conflicts in two different ways. With clashes of values, the solution is to have the right values and stand by them. With clashes of interests, the solution is to respect both interests and work with both interests to create solutions that work for the benefit of each side.

In the clashes of interests therefore, I advocate what I call the positive middle path. I do not just mean moderation, as middle can be found in any number of undesirable or unsatisfactory places. An example of this is if the middle between business and labor is found in labor over-regulating business and in business being terrible to the labor. I advocate the positive middle path, and that means:

Finding out what each interest wants;
Support what is legitimate;
Confront what is not legitimate;
And get them to negotiate solutions that work for both sides.

In all cases in politics, the interests involved are capable of both right and wrong. Both business and labor can do the right thing, and both business and labor can do the wrong thing. Business can produce prosperity; it is also capable of short-sighted, destructive and brainless practices such as burning the rainforest or flooding the atmosphere with CO2. And labor can also do both right and wrong, in some cases working hard and producing prosperity and in other cases prevailing upon other workers to not work harder than themselves.

With interests therefore, it is a matter of figuring out what they are right about and what they are wrong about. And then it is a matter of combining the sides in such a way that makes the best of – and achieves best results for – both. Neither business nor labor are good or evil; both are capable of each.

Of course we see the same thing with men and women. Both have always existed, and both have always been capable of the good and the bad. This is because of choice. Anything that has capacity of choice has the capacity for doing right and for doing wrong; and we have always seen – and will always see – the same in both men and women. It makes no sense to be either for men or for women. It makes sense to be for good women and for good men.

While a case can be made that compromising based on values is evil, compromise among interests is what I consider true good. Both sides are affirmed as legitimate, and what is legitimate in each is supported while potentials for malfeasance are checked. That way the best is made of all participants in the political system, and a benign and harmonious arrangement is cultivated where all interests are honored and learn how to work together to make a better world.

Iago and Misogyny

Iago was an evil manipulator who made Othello deadly jealous of his beloved wife Desdemona, resulting in him killing her. I have always wondered why there are so many men – including better-natured men – who are terrible toward women. A large part of the reason is the Iagos of the world.

Now an Iago figure does not necessarily have to be overtly evil, although some are. There are others who sincerely hold misogynistic convictions and think that they are right to do so. Both the evil and the confused wield influence over other men; and they direct that influence into making sure that they behave in the worst possible manner.

What would an Iago tell a vulnerable man? One thing that he may do is get him to suspect his woman of doing something wrong. It is to build paranoia and hysteria, which destroy love and turn people toward fear and hatred. The favorite lie toward that is of course claiming that the woman is being unfaithful. Another is that she is practicing witchcraft or influencing the children in the wrong way.

Other lies are more general – that women are bitches and whores; that women are evil; that women are the source of the world's suffering; that man owes it to his gender to control women and is not a man unless he does so; and further on along the same line. These add an element of false righteousness to the hatred and make the man feel morally justified in being an abuser. In some scenarios I have seen, cases actually were made that being abusive toward women is the rightful thing to do, and that refusing to do so serves Satan.

It is these attitudes that must be confronted if anything effective is to be done about domestic violence. For as long as there are men who think this way, the abuse will always go on. And yes, it will even be perpetrated by some of the world's better men.

If you think that women are bitches, whores or evil, then the solution is not to be with a woman. But these men are playing a game. They get a lot out of the relationship with the woman. They get sex, they get companionship, they get a clean house and dinner, in many cases they get another source of income. And instead of rewarding the woman appropriately to what they are getting from her, they instead decide that she is a baddy and treat her like trash.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a game. And gamers have no business claiming to have morality.

The argument that women are responsible for the world's suffering is ridiculous. As we know from science, suffering – in the form of such things as disease and predation – pre-exists humanity by millions of years. Dinosaurs suffered too. And even if there was such a person as Eve, she does not speak for today's women, and it is completely wrong to be punishing today's women for something that they had nothing to do with. For that matter, I refuse to be made answerable for the sins of Jeffrey Dahmer, even though I, like him, am a man.

To the other argument – that man owes it to his gender to control women – the response is that nothing is owed to a gender. Things are owed to people who have been contributors to humanity, of which as many were women as were men, and of the men the best were socially liberal and hated violence against women. I owe nothing to the next man that I don't owe also to the woman. I refuse to identify with a gender. I want each gender to be their best and to get along.

The Iago element in society is alive and kicking, and it becomes up to the men of goodwill to stand up to it. I hope more people do so.

The Awakening of Hassan

"If you love enough you will forgive anything," said Queen Sheherezade, and Fatima did. Rapes, daily beatings, death threats, constant verbal abuse, murder of her daughter - she forgave her husband Abdul everything. But Abdul would forgive absolutely nothing, no matter how little or insignificant. A speck of dust on the floor, a pot in the wrong place, kebab slightly overcooked, a spot on the clothes - all this was met with barrages of fists. Every little thing she's ever done he would remember and use against her years later. Nothing was ever good enough for Abdul, and everything was always Fatima's fault, whatever the actual source of the problem.

They had a daughter named Najida, who was nearing marriage age. Najida was beautiful, and Abdul hoped to give her to the son of the town's biggest businessman. Then one day she went out to the market and came back, every inch of her body in agony, her face and body scarred beyond recognition. A man had thrown a bucket of sulphuric acid into her face because she accidentally let the burqa slip for a moment and uncover her head. Najida forgave, but now she was family shame whom no man would ever marry. And that could not be forgiven, ever, no matter what else she did.

They had another daughter named Shaheena, who was gang-raped by a young tough named Kemal and his friends. This was the worst family shame possible. So Abdul beat Shaheena to death and threw her body to the dogs. That way, the family no longer had to live with that embarrassment.

They had a son named Hassan, who did not like what he saw around him. Abdul, neighbors, kids, kept calling him traitor, calling him crazy, calling him weak, calling him infidel. He still did not like what he saw. The imam arranged for a public whipping of Hassan, but that still did not sway him. So the imam told Abdul, "Send your son to a madrasa. They will teach him true Islamic ways."

The madrasa was a boarding school dedicated to the teaching of Islam. Its students were boys from all over Pakistan, cramped in small quarters. The education consisted of memorizing fully the Quran and applying its teachings rigorously day in and day out. The boys were trained to burn with the holy fire of Islam, and it was frequently heard them say, "I grow up to kill infidel." Hassan stayed there until the students were summoned to holy cause.

The name of the holy cause was Taliban. The mission: Invade and conquer Afghanistan and subdue it to true Islamic values. They crossed the border on armored vehicles, Toyota pickup trucks, buses, old tanks. They encountered minimal resistance. "Nobody wants to shoot a Talib," locals said, "it's like shooting a nun." Little did they know what the holy Talibs had in store for them.

The country was put under curfew, with roadblocks everywhere and inspection of everyone passing by. Businesses, homes, farms, were constantly raided, with any non-Quranic material confiscated and its owners publicly whipped. People were publicly executed - for playing music, for practicing Buddhism or Christianity, for traveling without a male relative, for talking to a person of other gender. Rape victims were charged with adultery and publicly stoned. Priceless artifacts
were destroyed, schools shut down, economic activity slowed to a crawl. Women were forbidden to go outside the home, and husbands were given life-and-death power over them. And most promising men were drafted into the Taliban, leaving their businesses and jobs unattended.

The only thing that grew under the holy Talibs were the jails. People were arrested for everything and anything. Hassan was assigned as a guard to a women's prison in Kandahar. "Surely," thought the commanders, "this will set this boy straight."

The prison was a fetid place crawling with lice, where human feces ran down the floor and food bowls were placed in it. The guards went from cell to cell every day, beating the inmates black and blue. The guards demanded that Hassan take part in the beatings; but he could not bring himself to do it. So they claimed that he was weak and corrupt, that he was not a man, that he should be shot, that he was a traitor to Islam, that the women there were evil whores who had destroyed the fabric of Afghan society and were using, manipulating and controlling him to serve Satan. Still Hassan would not take part in the beatings.

One day, the guards had had enough. Two of them accompanied Hassan to a cell occupied by four young women. They pointed their AK rifles at him and said, "You beat them, or we kill you."

There was no Quaranic justification for what Hassan did next. He knew that this was against Islamic principle, that he could be executed for it and may go to hell. But at this point he no longer cared. In the women he saw Najida's scars and Shaheena's corpse and realized that, if this was to become the way, then any daughters he may himself ever have would be subjected to a world where this was the fate they would have to suffer. And that, nothing could ever forgive.

Reaching behind for his AK, he slammed its butt into the heads of the two guards, knocking them unconscious. He then took off the key ring and went through the prison, opening every cell, and conducted the women quietly outside.

Outside was the sound of gunshots, bombs, people running from place to place. NATO troops were taking over the country. The Taliban was collapsing, and Allah was nowhere in sight. There were no easy solutions, but now they had a chance at a better future. A future not owned by barbarism and oppression; a future with possibility of freedom, peace, justice, and opportunity; a future into which it was rightful and sensible to bring new life.

Addressing Misogyny

In recent years we've seen a resurgence of aggressive misogyny. This trend must be stopped. My daughter will be growing up in a climate shaped by these movements; and I owe it to her as well as to the next woman to do my best by standing up to this trend.

Yes, it is true that Eminem's mother treated him like dirt, and he has every right to be angry at her for that. What he does not have the right to do is extrapolate this hatred on all women. My mother never acted that way; and if anyone treats her in the way that Eminem advocates men treat women I will kick his ass.

Do not like women? Fine, don't be with them. But most of these men not only do not leave their women but do everything in their power to make sure that the woman stays with them. They are playing a game. They get a lot out of the relationship. They get companionship, they get sex, they get a clean house and dinner, and they get another source of income. But instead of rewarding the woman accordingly to what they are getting from the woman, they instead decide that she is evil and treat her like dirt.

Then there are religious convictions that portray women as having brought suffering into the world. I have news for these people. Suffering pre-existed women – and humanity – by billions of years. Dinosaurs had diseases, and dinosaurs ate one another. Did a female dinosaur bring suffering into the world? Then go after dinosaurs and leave women alone.

Men hating women is a racket. It allows them to get what they want out of the woman without treating her according to what they are getting from her.

And people practicing rackets have no business to claim morality.

Understanding Women

E. E. Cummings said that the final secret is man. I think that he is wrong. I think that the final secret is the woman.

Men are not difficult to understand. With women however we see a vast history of misunderstanding, generally drawing the conclusion that women are inferior or evil. These conclusions are wrong. The best people I've known have been women. There is nothing inferior or evil about them; they have much more to offer than the people who attack them.

One claim is that real men don't try to understand women. I never claimed to be macho, but I can do 320 pushups, and I do want to understand women. The reason is neither wanting to play them nor to control them. The reason is wanting to be a positive influence in the lives of people I care about.

There has been much thought put into place about understanding men than there has been about understanding women. I think that this is wrong. Women are 50% of humanity; and the more they are understood, the better results can be accomplished.

The misogynistic attitudes on that matter are simply ridiculous. Men who howl about the women's “vanity” or “promiscuity” see in them their own sins. If a woman is bad, then don't be with her; and if women are bad then don't be with them. I have a better idea. It is to understand the women well enough to relate to them and to have relationships that mean something.

Much more thought needs to be put into understanding women for real. I for one find women much more interesting than I find men. The more there is real knowledge on the subject, the less the room for conmanship, the less we see these ridiculous misogynistic beliefs and the better the lot of both men and women.

Why God Should Come To Life as a Woman

Marina Tsvetayeva, a classical Russian poet, wrote,

God do not judge; on the earth

A woman you never were.

She has a profound argument there. According to the Bible, Jesus was God come alive to earth in the human form, with all the features of human being, who because he understood human experience was more likely to be merciful and understanding than a being that had never been human. He had great insight into human condition, and being both man and God he was able to advocate before God for men while also advocating before men for God. He experienced all the weaknesses and temptations to which people are liable and was therefore merciful toward other people.

Why does not God incarnate as a female, so that He understands the woman's condition and is more compassionate and merciful toward women as well?

Why not incarnate as a female? Women are half the world's population, and a God who has never been a female would find it difficult to relate to the women. Whereas if God comes to earth as a female, He is more likely to understand women by having experienced woman's condition on His own skin.

I have definitely known women of great intelligence, great integrity and great wisdom. Yet much of that wisdom gets lost because it is portrayed as part of something sinful. Some women are as wise as Jesus or Solomon; but they get portrayed as witches or worse. People benefit from their wisdom, then they burn them at the stake.

So I ask this of God. Why not come to earth as a woman and actually understand women enough to decide what's right and what's wrong for them?

God, Authority and New Age

In 1990s I had New Age associations. I remain in support of such practices as Zen, but I have always been against the idea that everyone makes their reality and is responsible for everything that happens to them. The reasons are the moral ones. If everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them, then if I were to rape and kill the next person it would be them doing it rather than me.

It is very easy to turn such beliefs on their heads. All one needs to do is impact upon the other person's life in a way that they can't ignore, and then they'll be having to claim that they are the ones doing it. A witch who gets burned will have to claim that she did something to bring that about.

The established religions are not immune from this vulnerability. If all authority is, as Romans 13 claims, there by will of God, then Stalin and Hitler were there by will of God, and Americans should have followed them unquestioningly. All it takes to turn such things on their heads is to become an authority oneself; and then the Bible-believing Christians will have to obey you because, by their own logic, you are there by will of God.

In recent studies it was shown that the highest IQ's are the atheists; then the liberal creeds; then the dogmatic creeds. One of the many reasons for this is that people with high IQ's are more likely to notice such discrepancies in religions, whereas the lower IQ's are less likely to ask questions of this sort. I am not saying that religions are all wrong, but some claims in them are definitely wrong, and this includes the preceding.

Having had very real spiritual experiences, I do not have the luxury of denying spiritual reality. I do however reserve the right to challenge wrong beliefs. This is the case both with established religions and with newer religions. My ultimate aim is to create a framework that is consistent both with scientific logic and with spiritual reality and that does not have weaknesses of this sort.

Players and Ethics

There are plenty of men who see their women as bad people but insist on staying with them. My response is that these men are playing a game.

If a woman really is a bad person, then one has no business having anything to do with her. But in these relationships not only do the men insist on staying with the woman but they do everything in their power to keep the women with them. That is because the man is playing a game. He gets a lot out of his relationship with the woman. He gets sex, he gets a clean house, he gets another source of income. But instead of rewarding the woman appropriately to what he gets from the woman, he instead decides that she is a bad person and treats her like trash.

Your wife or your girlfriend a bad person? Fine, don't be with her. Find someone whom you respect. Living with someone you don't respect is a stupid way to live.

But the man does not want that. He wants to see himself as a victim – of women, of liberalism, of “pussy-whipped” men – while benefiting from what the woman has to give. He is playing a game. And gamers have no business claiming to speak for ethics or for morality.

It is time that gamers be seen for what they are. A relationship that starts with deception can only tolerate more deception, and anything truthful – as well as any other competing fallacy – must be snuffed out for the deception to go on. It is time for deceivers to be seen for what they are and no longer be able to hide behind ethics. Doing that profanes ethics and turns it into a tool of evil, which it was never intended to be.

"Too good to be true"

In counseling women who have been victims of domestic violence, one line has been that, if something seems too good to be true, then it is.

The response is that this depends on what is one's reality marker. If someone's reality marker is set to the Holocaust, then anything will be too good to be true. If you are a beautiful and talented woman and all you get are arseholes, that's not reality. That's the case of things being too bad to be true.

If a woman has had bad experiences with men, it doesn't mean that the next man who comes along is going to behave in the same manner. There are plenty of decent men in the world. The solution is to cease identifying reality with malfeasance and realize the reality of the good things that one has to offer. Once that is done, one's reality marker is set in a more viable place, and one gets men who merit what one has to offer.

Unwritten Rules

During the 1998 Lewinski hysteria, the editors of Salon were attacked for violating “unspoken rules” of media conduct.

My response to that is that if something is not honest enough to be spoken is not honest enough to be followed, and that creating these kinds of unspoken rules creates a de facto totalitarianism in a country that is intended to be free.

I see every reason to follow actual law. Actual law has been voted upon by people's representatives, and it is therefore legitimate. The same is not the case with unspoken rules. What we see there is unelected, unofficial, unchecked, unbalanced and unaccountable organs of usurpation of power seeking to force themselves upon the population. And that means, de facto totalitarianism.

Really, where do I cast my vote for or against these rules and these entities? Where do I cast my vote for or against these usurpers? Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that I must follow the dictates of such entities. And supporting these entities results in nothing less than betrayal of the Constitutional order.

You want to force these rules? Fine, make it official. Make it the law that a woman cannot sleep with more than one man, or that a man has to be a corporate drone. Only do not go on claiming that you speak for any kind of liberty. Say that you are a Nazi, and that your demands are a function of your being a Nazi.

Unwritten rules are a way to sneak in tyranny in a nation that is intended to be free. As such, they are a violation of the constitutional order. Confronting such things is an act not of sociopathy but of righteousness. And the more people do that, the better the society becomes.

Communism and Obama

In recent years we have been hearing a lot about Communism. It occurs to me that there are a number of issues here.

The first is that Communism is obviously wrong. There is no such thing as historical inevitability; orders rise and fall all the time for all sorts of reasons. The businessman is not a thief; he is someone who gets things done. And the problems that Communists seek to redress through class struggle are solved a lot better through social mobility.

Another is that comparing contemporary progressives and President Obama to Communists is also obviously wrong. Contemporary progressives have not built labor camps or invaded other countries. And if President Obama had been a Communist, he would have nationalized the banks and the car industry. Instead he bailed them out; and American capitalism owes a lot to this president.

I have no idea why Communism, which can be refuted in a single paragraph, got as big as it did and got the attention of so many intelligent people. But the fact that the slander of Obama or Progressives as communists got as big as it did can be attributed to bad thinking and lack of correction for lies. We cannot correct the past, but we can correct the errors that are being made in the present. And one of the biggest errors going around these days is comparison of President Obama or contemporary progressives to the Soviets when they have committed none of the atrocities that took place in the Soviet Union and have instead rescued American economy from what would have been a much worse crisis.

Right now Republicans in Congress are engaged in undermining everything that is done by this administration, thinking that the worse they make things the more likely the people are to vote for them in the upcoming election. This behaviour should be exposed for everyone to see. They think that the people are stupid enough to blame the Democrats for what they are doing to America. And leaders who think people to be stupid enough to fall for such things cannot be good for the people.

So that, while Communism is wrong, so is the behavior of contemporary Republicans. Obama, unlike his predecessor, was legitimately elected, and for him to be in power is people's will. He is not a Communist, and he has done a lot for American capitalism. Stop erecting straw men and work on implementing real solutions.

Are Racism and Sexism Natural?

There are many people who think that racism and sexism are natural. As a father, I know that not to be the case. My daughter's first social interaction, at age 1, was coming up to a little Malaysian girl and giving her a hug. I have seen children play happily across racial and gender lines. If little children can be wiser than us, then boy do we have a lot to learn.

Are racism and sexism natural? It is natural to identify with a group of which one is a part. It is not natural however to see one as being superior than the other, or that one should be the leader and that the other should be a slave. To find out what is natural to humanity, study children. And then you will know what is naturally human and what is a result of ideology or conditioning.

There are differences between men and women, and there are genetic differences between races. That does not make one rightly the ruler and the other rightly the servant. Recognizing differences is neither racism nor sexism; it is reality. Where the whole exercise goes wrong is if someone decides that men should rule women or that white people should rule over black people. There is no room for this; both black people and women are capable of everything of which white men are capable, and discriminating against them is wrong.

Not everything that little children do is right, and there is bullying behavior in children. It however appears to be independent of race or gender. But the idea that racism and sexism are natural is transparently wrong. If it were natural, then children would show these behaviors. They don't.

One should not be blind to the differences between men and women; but neither should one be blind to the differences among women and the differences among men. Some things are gender, others are not. With men and women, there is the emotional and sexual nature, which is gendered, and the mind and the will which both men and women have in common. The logical solution is full equality for women in matters demanding the mind and the will – and women and men being able to pursue mutually fulfilling relationships to actualize their emotional and sexual nature and produce and sustain new life. Some may regard this stance as being sexist. I regard it as being merely reasonable.

In short, there is a lot that adults stand to learn from children; and from observing children we discover what is natural and what is not. Children are neither sexist nor racist, which means that these things are not natural to humanity.

We also stand to learn a lot from history. In the ancient world, there was no racism. The white Romans, the dark-skinned Egyptians, the Hindus and many others got along and traded as equals. During the Middle Ages, the white man was at the bottom of the world. The white man rose to prominence by virtue of science and technology; and, having known any number of scientists and technology professionals, I've seen them as being some of the least racist people I've ever known.

Far be it from me to support political correctness. Political correctness, as one Jewish liberal lady told me, is an embarrassment to liberalism. I speak from the position of simple reason. Men and women have the sexual and emotional nature, which is gendered, and mind and will, where they are equal. Both deserve constructive fruition; both deserve to be honored and let free to produce fruit.

With race, there are definite genetic differences; but none of them result logically in the idea that one races should rule and the others be ruled. They are different; however there is more in common among them than there are differences among them. A black person can do everything that a white person can do; and George Washington Carver, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Colin Powell, Barack Obama and any number of others show this to be the case.

For some time in America the white schools and the black schools were held separate from one another under the rubric of “Separate but equal.” It didn't work; the white schools were better than the black schools. I propose this idea: Different but equal. And I mean equal for real. If in the South you can get as close as you want for as long as you aren't too high – and if in the North you can get as high as you want for as long as you don't get too close – I propose that black people should be as close as they want to be and as high as they want to be. I am very close to any number of wonderful black people whom I am proud to call my friends. And I am supportive of their career goals.

So no, racism and sexism are not natural, and even if they were we have the mind and the will to stand up to such things. See people as people and treat the person of the next race in the same way as you would treat the person of your own race. The result will not only be social peace, but also a noble and rightful arrangement that works for everyone.

Personality Disorders and Self-Esteem

Personality Disorders Holocaust

With personality psychology we see terrible outcomes. What we see in effect is an effective holocaust perpetrated against people accused of personality disorders, along with an institution of de facto totalitarianism against everyone else. Using disorders whose definitions are very similar to the Nazi definition of Jew, the believers in personality psychology are waging a de facto holocaust on those accused of these disorders, as well as creating a de facto totalitarianism for everyone else.

As people have been presented as being criminal by virtue of their personalities, what has in fact been instituted is the Orwellian concept of crimethink: That one can be made criminal by virtue of how one thinks. And with that has been put in place a de facto totalitarianism that aims to control people's minds, people's personalities, and pursuant to that people's lives.

Which de facto totalitarianism has then been forced on countries intended to be free, with predictably hypocritical, oppressive and disastrous results.

First the hypocrisy. Every white, part-white, Asian, Hindu or Middle Eastern person living in United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Latin America, is there because their ancestors were immigrants. Immigrants are people who left their family, their community, their country, their tradition, and their way of life, to pursue a different way of life in the New World. According to the believers in personality disorders, that is something that only a sociopath or a narcissist would do. Which means that all of the aforementioned populations are descended from people they would describe as possessing narcissistic or sociopathic character.

For the people living now, that can affectuate in only two possible outcomes. Either they have kept true to ways of their ancestors - meaning, to ways of supposed narcissists and sociopaths - and are now living according to narcissistic or sociopathic adaptations - or they have broken with the ways of their ancestors, in which case they are supposedly narcissists or sociopaths themselves. Either way, this means that every white, part-white, Asian, Hindu or Middle Eastern person living in United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Latin America, is supposedly a sociopath or a narcissist. And if the black people on the territory of these countries (except South Africa) think that they are exempt from it, they should think again. Either they are African immigrants or descendants of African immigrants - in which case they are supposedly sociopaths or narcissists by the same mechanism as the preceding - or they are descended from slaves who at one point refused to be slaves any more and who are therefore supposedly sociopathic or narcissistic as well.

According to definitions of sociopathic and narcissistic character, as same can be portrayed also all the people to whom the contemporary world owes what it has. Who but a supposed sociopath or a narcissist would have the chutzpah and the temerity to break with the ways of the time to create such things as representative democracy, as was created by American founders at the time when monarchy was the supposedly divinely ordained order, and as has since then become the order of the First World and much of the rest of the world? Who but a supposed sociopath or a narcissist would have the gall to build railroads and skyscrapers and computers, to work to cure diseases, to conceive of any new idea or a theory or invention to which the world owes what it has? Who but a supposed sociopath or a narcissist would break with the ways of the time to do such things as create free markets, abolish slavery, start large-scale industry or charity or religious or social organization, push for women's or workers' rights, confront institutional corruption, develop the underdeveloped parts of the world, or confront such wrongs as sex trafficking and drafting of children into wars? And finally, most relevant for the people in psychology, who but a supposed sociopath or a narcissist would think up of something such as psychology as did its founders and doggedly put it forth despite the fact that it was in complete contradiction with ways and beliefs of the time and were scandalous to those ways and beliefs?

To the people whom the believers in personality psychology describe as sociopathic or narcissistic, is owed every significant improvement in history, whether it be political, scientific, social or economic. To such is owed the science of psychology itself and their own place - both as psychological practicioners and as residents of the New World. And the believers in personality disorders, in pathologizing risk-taking, passion, freedom of thought, personal freedom, romantic passion, innovative thinking, and willingness to take strong stands whether or not they be the popular stances in the time and the place, are denying the benefits of the same to the countries in which they operate and condemn these countries to floundering shorn of what made them great - or even possible - in the first place.

It should not be seen as coincidental that American academia significantly lost the amount of Nobel Prizes won by American scientists once these beliefs became widespread in academia. Nor should it be seen as coincidental that these beliefs have lead to a war against liberty and an effective totalitarianism taking place in ever greater sections of the free world. As more and more people and groups are demonized, pathologized and destroyed, the noose tightens more around the necks of all others and makes liberty harder and harder to come by. This results in a profound de facto totalitarianism that would not tolerate difference from itself even within the privacy of people's minds. Not even the Communists have been able to come up with a more insidious and more profound way to rob people of freedom, nor with a more hypocritical ideology, nor with a more complete usurpation of people's lives.

The belief in personality psychology is not only war against life and liberty; they are also a vast drain on competitiveness. Any mind that produces innovation is a mind that is original. An original mind will be seen as pathological or even as evil by those who equate health and goodness with the ways and beliefs of the time and the place. As the minds that are capable of innovation and creativity are attacked, thus lessens the country's ingenuity and intellectual quickness. This results in the nation losing competitiveness. Ingenuity will not abandon humanity, but it might very well abandon the countries that practice such ideologies, leading to these nations falling behind as the rest of the world, immune from such errors, surges ahead.

For an ideology such as this to exist in nations bound by their constitutional principles to protect and affirm freedom, is an act of violation of constitutional principles and thus in itself an act of narcissism and sociopathy. A violation not only in face of constitution, but also of liberty and of national good. The practicioners of such beliefs must be seen as such: sociopaths and narcissists by their own logic - and perpetrators of holocaust and de factototalitarianism in the free world by the logic of history. They, not the people whom they attack,are the true threat to the well-being of the nations in which they practice their beliefs.

Self-Esteem Abuses

Another such usurpation has been done in the name of self-esteem. The con runs as follows. First the person is told what to esteem themselves by, and in accordance to what code. Then the person is told to take responsibility for his life as a matter of achieving this manipulated code which is introjected into his consciousness under the rubric of self-esteem. The actual situation by transitive logic: The person is told what life to have and what to be and is made to take responsibility for living according to the lies of the people dishonest enough to perpetrate such a transparent fraud.

Besides serving as a method of brainwashing and enslavement, self-esteem movement also does much that is of poison to humankind. The person who has higher standards will always find it more difficult to think well of themselves than the person who has lower standards. In rewarding self-esteem, one therefore rewards those who lack standards and punishes those who have standards, resulting in an inverted value situation in which those who have the least expectations for themselves flourish and those who demand more of themselves are left licking their boots.

There are also many people who believe that abuse in relationships happens to people who do not possess high enough self-esteem. In fact, abuse happens a lot more against people who do have high self-esteem and who because of that may not be content to be someone's "kitchen bitch," punching bag, beast of burden, or any other parts of what is known as the traditional wife role. The worst abuses happen not against women who think poorly of themselves, but against women who think highly enough of themselves to not be content with perpetuating wrongful, oppressive attitudes and adaptations such as ones that masquerade as "tradition" and "family values." In the worst abuse situations, the abuser is trying to bludgeon the other person into subservience and out of her selfhood, including out of any self-esteem that she may possess. That does not happen because of low self-esteem. That happens because the person has high enough self-esteem to have objections to unfair, unrightful, and oppressive arrangements and ways of life. And portraying such a person as instead being lacking in self-esteem not only misdiagnoses the situation, but having fully misdiagnosed the situation prevents real solutions from being achieved.

Nor is the abusive behavior the result of low self-esteem. There are plenty of self-confident sport and military types who are brutal to their women and plenty of shy men who aren't. Helping the bully to have higher self-esteem is not going to prevent abusive behavior. He will just feel more empowered in being abusive.

My solution is to neither have high self-esteem nor low self-esteem. My solution is to not bother with self-esteem, period. It is to live rightfully however I feel about myself. I put it to you that doing that will do more for your self-esteem than any amount of therapy.

In misconstruing everything as self-esteem, the people who believe in the concept have misrepresented what actually is happening and created a universal diagnosis that is plainly wrong and whose effects have been highly deleterious. Now, people who are at the receiving end of any kind of wrong are accused of lacking in self-esteem and portrayed for that reason as being bad to anyone with whom they may come in contact. This scares away any potential support
and makes it easier for the bully to continue to bully. Instead of seeing the bully for what he is and what he does, it is now those at the receiving end of the same that are being blamed for his behavior. This gives incentive for the bully to abuse, knowing that the person at its receiving end will be blamed for it, seen as lacking in self-esteem or as damaged goods, and denied any potential support or love or respect. The worse the abuse, the more the person at the receiving end is seen as pathological, the less support for her and the greater his ability to injure, oppress, and entomb her. The result is a downward spiral leading to ever greater violence and abomination. This shows just how far from sanity, righteousness and integrity the concept of self-esteem has taken the world.

As the person at the receiving end of abuse and brutality is slandered as causing it through low self-esteem, such a person is denied a way out of the situation. Such a person is also denied a future and denied support. The result is perpetuation and incentivization of abusive practices. This - along with manipulating people into de facto slavery as part of striving to meet an imposed self-esteem construct, and along with inverting value and giving the world to its worst elements - have been the fleurs du mal of self-esteem psychology.

(more at https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatwritings/psychology)

Abortion: Compromise Solution

Central to the issue of abortion is deciding when life begins. If you believe that life begins at conception, then you will be against abortion. If you believe that life begins when the embryo is out of somebody else's body, then you will be in favor of abortion.

I will meet both half-way. Here are my reasons.

Law does not protect life; it protects human life. And human life is not human until it starts to look human, which is in the third trimester. In the first trimester the embryo is a clump of cells, and in the second trimester the embryo looks like a fish. Neither of these qualify as human life. Human life begins when it starts to look human.

For this reason I propose a compromise solution. Let people be able to abort embryos in first and second trimesters, and make it illegal to abort a third-trimester embryo. Put the rights of the living humans above the rights of a clump of cells; and protect life when it actually starts to look human.

Is Love Indestructible?

Some people think that love is fragile; others think that it is indestructible. I do not see anything human as indestructible. Love is powerful – sometimes very powerful; it is not however omnipotent, and there are all sorts of ways to destroy love.

I had a girlfriend whom I loved very much, whose stepmother told her that I was using her. Totally wrong; but she believed it. She finally figured out how much I loved her a number of years down the road, and shortly after that she was dead from medical malpractice.

In Othello, Iago destroys the love that Othello has for Desdemona by telling him a bunch of damaging lies. One does not have to be purposefully evil, like Iago, in order to do that. There are all sorts of men who put suspicion and nastiness in other men's minds as to the women with whom they are. Even the better-natured men are subject to this malicious manipulation; and we see all sorts of good-natured men being horrible to their wives and girlfriends because of the nastiness that comes from these misogynists and deceivers.

My last relationship, which was loving enough to see me move from America to Australia to be with the woman, was destroyed because of a disagreement as to how to deal with her ex. I wanted to take a more conciliatory approach, and she wanted to take a more confrontational approach. This disagreement destroyed our relationship, even though it was very much based in love – love powerful enough to see me leave a very nice setup in order to be with her.

Is love powerful? Yes. Is it indestructible? No. Nothing human is indestructible. And some things are beautiful enough that they should be preserved, whether or not they are fragile.

Psychological Nastiness in the Media

Probably the ugliest aspect of contemporary media is the nasty psychological attacks that are made against public figures. They get accused of being “sociopaths,” “narcissists” and elsewise along the same lines. It was done to Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Larry Ellison, Madonna, Brittney Spears, George Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. In all cases my response has been sympathy for these people.

In most of these cases, the person being criticized is better than the person doing the criticism. The critic uses a computer that runs Microsoft, listens to Madonna or Brittney Spears, benefits (or used to benefit) from the prudent economic policies of the Clinton administration, and lives in a city some of whose most famous buildings were built by Donald Trump. These are the people who actually get things done; and I would take Bill Clinton over some ungrateful media nasty any day.

Are all of these people good human beings? No; but neither are most people in the media. Most of these people would be just as “narcissistic” as these celebrities if they had a chance. Instead they are driven by this: Nastiness and envy. Nastiness at the sight of significant things being done, and envy that they are not the ones doing it.

The fastest way to get me to sympathize with someone is to attack them psychologically. And indeed these attacks are completely wrongful. Maybe Hitler had a sociopathic or narcissistic personality disorder; but so have millions of people who did not kill 50 million people. And more people than killed by Hitler were killed by Islamist jihadists and European imperialists, none of whom are accused of being narcissists or sociopaths and all of whom thought that they were completely normal.

What this means is the following: That psychological attacks are simply wrong. Even if Bill Gates has similar psychological makeup as Adolf Hitler, does not mean that he is going to put people into gas chambers. People have choice, whatever their psychology; and that means that even a “narcissist” or a “sociopath” can be a good person and do meaningful things for the world.

The attention of these media people would be better spent fighting real wrong. There are plenty of rackets out there and plenty of conmen who lead people to terrible places. Confront the holocaust deniers, confront the global warming deniers, confront the people who throw sulfuric acid into girls' faces, confront the people who hope for end times so that they not have to be responsible for what they are doing to the planet. Leave psychology to psychologists and recognize that, whatever the person's psychology, they have the free will to do the right thing by America and by the world.