I created a new tag a couple days ago: "The fragmentation."
The first post in this series was "'It’s a kind of mosaic of what it was moments before'/'My memories are a montage of magical madnesses.'" Those are quoted from Robert Downey Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and I asked:
Have minds fragmented? Are we dreamily struggling to pull them together with alliteration and the notion that splintered things really do cohere? This mess in my mind is... a mosaic... a montage....
You know, we've been laughing at Kamala Harris's way of expressing herself, but she's not the only one....
I think we're losing it. Language. It's slipping away. Fragmenting. Into moments. Moments of montage and mosaic. Mwah!
Now, I'm going to use the tag a second time — a tag is a fragmented search for coherence — because The Atlantic pushed an article at me: "WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID/It’s not just a phase" by Jonathan Haidt. This is from April 2022. I blogged it at the time, but it's on theme for me and this time I want to highlight the material on fragmentation:
The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families....
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What's missed is associating stupidity with women in charge.
The iPhone was released in 2007. No further explanation required.
I think SNAFU is what he refers to. Digesting the information tsunami available on suddenly new digital platforms is a challenge.
But that’s what trial lawyers do in every case. The deluge of evidence and witnesses testimony discovered before trial has to become a pattern easily communicable to Judge and Jurors. Which is why a simplified story has to be told against the opponents simplified story. The best story wins.
This is why the trial lawyers decided to invent entire fake educational disciplines complete with Treatises lauded as written by The Expert in each new fake science. As I recall Jeffrey Epstein was paying out mega bucks at elite colleges to do just that.
This new found method unlocked mega jury verdicts. Remember John Edwards wealth system. This lead the way into the truly wealthy elites pouring billions into making up a totally fake Global Warming Science to steal all that there is on earth.
I like alliteration. I take time to make my nouns and adjectives alliterate because I enjoy using poetic devices in my prose. Call it an affectation based on Medieval Skaldic traditions or a foolish pleasure, but don't call it a cure for anything other than the tedium of common speech.
Who was the President of the United States in 2010, and what political party held the reins of power in Congress?
The Left cannot stand the fact that they no longer have complete control over everything in American life. And this is so despite the fact that they have won so many institutions. I’m going to buy and read Chris Rufo’s new book right now through the Althouse portal.
The Left hated Rush Limbaugh so much because he was a dissenting voice. Tucker Carlson was fired because he wouldn’t go along with the narrative.
Tucker has a new interview with Andrew Tate and he discusses the Covid experience in Sweden. Looking back on it, the shutdown was completely crazy. I met a business guy yesterday and he Covid killed his business. Thousands of stories like this. And now crazy inflation and interest rates.
"It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history."
TWANLOC. Fragmentation of the mind, of culture, of politics always leads to physical fragmentation. The only thing that's variable is time. I've been on record a long time saying that half the country doesn't belong with the other half. There will be no meeting of the minds. The talking past each other will get louder. The split will continue to widen.
I do not want to occupy the same country with Hpudding or Inga, and others. I want them to have their own country where they can continue to execute their social priorities with their money and their time, and vice versa. I do not want my children to occupy the same country with the children of people like this. Regardless of whether or not the split happens in my lifetime I will prepare my children for it to happen in theirs.
What cannot continue logically will not continue, and a split is inevitable at this point, probably after the collapse of the dollar as the international reserve currency of choice.
I see a lot of binary thinking now. Absolutes where things are ambiguous. The binary minded person says, "I am on the side of love, but they are on the side of hate." Binary mindedness fuels the fragmentation by removing a place for discussion or disagreement. If the starting point for me is to prove I am not on the side of hate, then I'm not even going to engage.
Binary thinking runs all through the Bible: the righteous and the wicked. But I see the binary mind today in all sorts of people who aren't religious at all.
From the article:
"Something went terribly wrong..."
Yes. The hard left (deep blue) became intractable. The motto: 'we can't agree to disagree.'
Only AI will remain unfragmented, a link to language and linear thought. Humanity is on a kaleidoscopic journey.
Ambien does that to me.
Here’s the thing that just might be the tipping point. The Left insists that 2 + 2 = 5. That is, men can become pregnant. Women can become men.
Even dopey follower people can see that this is wrong and crazy.
"The story of Babel is the best metaphor"
No. It didn't just happen, and it's not divine justice. It's a prog thing. They want it.
"We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past."
Now, Jon, ask yourself: cui bono?
"It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history."
But except for SCOTUS and a few states, blue rules.
"within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families..."
Nonsense. In the MSM, tech, academia, public education, professional associations, big-city governmetns, the deep state, and non-profits blue lords it over red. Fragmentation is a rhetorical figleaf.
Haidt's quasi-therapeutic diagnosis obscures political reality. He is a good man, and relatively brave, but even he cannot call the prog devastation for what it is. Until the nice, reasonable liberal people--the Haidts and the Althouses--truly band together with us deplorables, we'll get more of the same.
"What are these dark days I see in this world so badly bent
How can I redeem the time - the time so idly spent
How much longer can it last - how long can this go on"
I have noticed personal fragmentation of my language and thinking for at least 13 years when I started usingan electronic medical record that required opening new windows for each thing I wanted to record about a patient encounter. Those things don’t allow a natural narrative flow. Reading them is also fragmenting. That means reports I get from other doctors read in a fragmented way, too, because most electronic medical record software is designed that way. I switched recently to a different electronic record that lets me document everything on one page and also lets me look at other reports without leaving my documentation page and I feel like I am getting my mind back. I wonder how many others not in medicine experience this in their workplace?
Of course David Begley is a fan of Andrew Tate, currently accused of sex trafficking and rape.
Really makes his claims of 'the other side' being groomers and pervs ridiculous.
But we already knew he was a blowhard who didn't walk his talk.
But that’s what trial lawyers do in every case. The deluge of evidence and witnesses testimony discovered before trial has to become a pattern easily communicable to Judge and Jurors. Which is why a simplified story has to be told against the opponents simplified story. The best story wins.
This is why the trial lawyers decided to invent entire fake educational disciplines complete with Treatises lauded as written by The Expert in each new fake science.
I love this explanation for how we got to a critical theory-based educational system, but trial lawyers have been having to create and use narrative against narrative for considerably longer than the period under discussion, haven't they?
I'm inclined to blame smartphones more, like whoever it was up thread who pointed out that the iphone came out in 2007. And boom - suddenly we all had the world in our pockets, and we had to do something to sort through it all. Some of us went with culture, high and low; some went with politics; some went with the myth that we can and should be just as engaged with strangers from across the world as we are with those actually close to us. (I love that it's possible to have "friends" you'll never meet in person but talk with every day, but it's not the same thing as the friend you share a meal or a walk or a shirt with.) And of course, combinations of these and other large categories of ways to approach a too-big, too-present world.
And then, within these large categories, we fragmented further based on our preferences and belief systems. In fashion, you could live in an online world of beauty, of ugliness, of everyday attractiveness, of everyday ridiculousness (like the sites mocking "people of Walmart") - but in all of these, of criticism: what's good and what's bad, according to a particular site's bias.
In American politics, we separated ourselves into those who believe that our very pluralistic society has been able to thrive because the Constitution protects individuals' rights from government's and even other individuals' desires to curtail them, as if individual liberties are the goal, and those who (ISTM) believe that the Constitution primarily lays out how individuals must behave in order to preserve society itself, as if the preservation of society is the goal. One perspective requires tolerance for opposing viewpoints and respect for all the natural and lawful rights of others who hold viewpoints with which even the great majority of society may disagree. The other perspective requires that individual behavior (and even thought, if it can be discerned) conform to a societal standard, for the good of society, as they see it.
Is it fragmentation? Seems more like a chemical precipitation, where half the population--mostly the younger half-- is solidifying in response to the Woke virus. The advent of the iPhone and social media have created the conditions for a self-policing electorate that craves social approval, that responds instantly to the latest woke craze (if you're not trans, you're not cool!) and demands censorship of any speech that questions the narrative.
The rest of us are left suspended in Old Weird America, with our idiosyncratic political, social and spiritual individualism, sensing how cut off we are from these solidified pod people, cocooned with their iPhones desperate to join the latest thread of virtual reality.
I wonder if the forced jab wrecked our hearts and minds. the commies are such ghouls.
Maybe we talk that way because there are so many land mines of though crime that avoiding them is just as much of a necessity as the communication of our thoughts. Fragmentation is perhaps a coping mechanism.
I was at the car care shop for a rental car maintenance, the two front tires needed to be replaced, in my opinion. So it need it more than just an oil change. Now, I know that the rental company has to approve it, but the shop manager spoke in such a way as to convey to me that they may refuse changing the tires, even though the tires needed to be changed. I started instinctively smiling, and when the shop keeper didn’t smile along I felt like I had to explain that my laughter was a nervous reaction to the idea that a car rental company would do such a thing. I wasn’t laughing at him disrespectfully. The shop keeper went on to relate a story of a young woman who was refused that very same kind of maintenance. I mumbled on something along the lines that I would rather return the car if they refused to change the tires.
I heard recently about a poll saying genz finds talking on the phone to be the most stressful thing they could be asked to do.
I have to say, I'm disappointed to see Tucker airing an interview with Andrew Tate. The charges against Tate might be trumped up and he might be suffering an unfair attack, but he's still an arrogant P.O.S., with a toxic message for young men. There are much better candidates, with much more powerful messages to offer than this cut-rate, self-absorbed rooster.
"I do not want to occupy the same country with Hpudding or Inga, and others.....I do not want my children to occupy the same country with the children of people like this."
Those types of people, like syphilis and gonorrhea, will always be with us. It's better to have a few of them in our midst as explicit examples for the children regarding the dangers of muddled thinking and radical Marxism than to have the children learn about them the hard way. Afterall, if the ancient shepherds had been able to observe and understand the effects of such venereal diseases they might have reconsidered that first tryst with the ovine pasture queens and society could have avoided syphilis altogether. I believe it's the same with leftist progressive dogma - better to have it out in the open so the kids can get a whiff of it and get if off their shoes before tracking it into the house. Worked for my kids and grandkids.
We've always been a fragmented country. We just didn't notice because we had a top-down centralized media and culture. I can remember when you had 3 TV network News programs and PBS. And your local newspaper. And nationals Weekly news magazines. That was it. Easy for the liberal elite to keep up the fiction that we all believed in one thing.
Then came the internet and things became more real and free for a time.
Of course, the Power elite hate that, so they've ramped up the internet censorship x100. Any person who tries to do anything even slightly askance from the "party line" gets attacked, even someone like Elon Musk. You had Tucker being driven from the airwaves for just "noticing things". The Left hates freedom of thought.
And the Left has become so intolerant and totalitarian, you've had a reaction from the center-right. They REFUSED to accept Trump as POTUS. And they spent 4 years having a temper-tantrum and trying to destroy him. Given that, its impossible to believe we live in one country with all of us working for the same thing.
I've become curious about how many new tags you create each year. It would have started to decline at some point -- maybe after the first five years (but when?) and then some recent years may have been above average for the plateau. I could make a visualization if you have the raw numbers.
We've ALWAYS debated the present and plans for the future. No nation can survive that can't agree on its history.
"What's missed is associating stupidity with women in charge."
Yup. Average IQ, ~4 points below men. True story.
"Recent studies conclude that men on average have higher intelligence than women by 3-5 IQ points. However, the ultimate evolutionary question of why men should have evolved to have higher intelligence than women remains."
Source: National Institutes of Health
As to "the ultimate evolutionary question of why men should have evolved to have higher intelligence than women remains.", the answer is easy. To preserve the species.
I do not want to occupy the same country with Hpudding or Inga, and others. I want them to have their own country where they can continue to execute their social priorities with their money and their time, and vice versa.
I agree. there are two problems though.
The Ingas of the world aren't willing to leave us alone. They insist on imposing their way of life on everyone. The answer used to be to move somewhere else and start over. Life was harder, (which helped to keep the Ingas away) but there was more freedom. Eventually hard work made life better and easier. Then the Ingas showed up and it was time to move again. California is the perfect example. The problem is, there is nowhere else on Earth to go to anymore.
"Of course David Begley is a fan of Andrew Tate, currently accused of sex trafficking and rape.
Really makes his claims of 'the other side' being groomers and pervs ridiculous.
But we already knew he was a blowhard who didn't walk his talk."
Q. Argumentum ad hominem. How does it work?
A. It doesn't.
Which is why I pity folks who have no other choice but to employ it.
I created a new tag a couple days ago: "The fragmentation."
You fraggot!
"What's missed is associating stupidity with women in charge."
Have freedom and independence gotten better or worse since women got the vote? When did the idea of a small, relatively powerless government get abandoned?
But it's not stupidity. It's the emphasis on emotions rather than reason, feelings instead of facts and the drive to find a powerful protector and provider. Seen from the women's point of view, they are behaving entirely rationally.
@Free Manure While You Wait!: "Yup. Average IQ, ~4 points below men. True story."
Hunters, predators, and aggressive animals must be a wee bit smarter than prey and passive animals. Coyotes vs. rabbits. Mountain lions vs. deer. Males traditionally pursue women, while women in traditional societies with small children are routinely cared for and protected by their "husbands." Females also lack upper body strength and research has also found the obvious -- women can never achieve parity with men for pull-ups, and some can't do a single one despite training. With the bulk of the body down low as "child-bearing hips" coupled with thin arms...the cause is obvious. But academics need something do do with their time.
Yes Virginia, men are biologically different from women. Gender is the intellectual fluffy foam on the coffee of biological reality.
Now, does this mean lower IQ for females or just different strengths and abilities? Women do indeed excel at teaching and nurturing and nursing, etc. Males are great at engineering and tracking prey, but often let other people sink or swim. Women have a complimentary role.
Read some Neil Young lyrics. They are often created for sound, not meaning. This is not new.
"Now you're underneath the stair
And you're moving out somewhere.
And the people that you met,
And it's your first cigarette."
"Women have a complimentary role."
Or maybe a complementary role. But what do I know with my low IQ, my large hips, my lamprey emotions seeking an attachment to a food source, and my inability to do pull ups? Though I have done pullups for a great many small young predators, and moreover, in my silly way have generally behaved exactly as if I liked the little guys and thought they'd be men, not displaced carnivores, when they grew up.
There's was an exhibit awhile back called "America is hard to see." The content, as I recall it, was wokey rubbish but the theme had real insight. It IS hard to see America at any time. And if you feel required to sum it up a 140 word tweet, it gets harder. America, as I see it is more like an epic poem or a long novel or even in some ways, a TV series that lasts over 10 or 12 seasons. There's a lot of stories and if you live a long time you encounter many of them and friends and relatives encounter more. If I were to say that in today's situation, most Americans are filtering past filters meant to block communication among participants in different stories, would I be giving away a secret? If you can only allow that leaves exist and not branches and tree trunks, is the reality fragmented or is your knowledge of reality insufficient?
I believe that the elites sold our manufacturing base to China and got rich on the transaction. And now, as a group, they're guiltily spending their money to "improve" the people they impoverished. But they can't improve us with any of the proven ways such as religion or humanism or any other way that involves looking for the truth. Because the truth about the elites that sold the work of two hundred years, is like the truth about the Bidens. It's shameful corruption merging into oncoming senility. In relation to which, most of us have "Gone to Texas" or at least "Gone Fishing."
@Free Manure While You Wait!: "Yup. Average IQ, ~4 points below men. True story."
It's my understanding that women have a stronger preference for for men who are smart, whereas men are more likely to prefer a woman who is not dumb. There is enough of a gap between those two concepts to account for the difference.
And the standard deviation with IQs is 15 points. A 4 point difference does not amount to much.
Jamie said...
"...our very pluralistic society has been able to thrive because the Constitution protects individuals' rights from governments' and even other individuals' desires to curtail them..."
A bit on a tangent from your main point, but...
Pluralism recognizes our differences, but emphasizes what we have in common (e pluribus unum); multiculturalism and diversity emphasize the differences (and fragmentation follows).
"I do not want to occupy the same country with Hpudding or Inga, and others. I want them to have their own country where they can continue to execute their social priorities with their money and their time, and vice versa."
That won't fly, and the Hpuddings and Ingas know it. Their crap ideas, ignoring the reality of human nature, don't work. They need the productive as hosts to provide for their parasitic desires.
Two people holding signs, one conservative and one, progressive...
Conservative: "Leave Me Alone"
Progressive: "No"
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”
"That won't fly, and the Hpuddings and Ingas know it. Their crap ideas, ignoring the reality of human nature, don't work. They need the productive as hosts to provide for their parasitic desires."
I didn't say their crappy shithole of a country wouldn't collapse in 5 years, I'm just saying they should have their own. Making sure it was an island nation would be critical (for instance using atomic bombs to kick off the San Andreas turning the faultzone into an inland sea permanently separating California), that way they at least couldn't just walk back into the nation they formerly hated and used to inhabit.
That way they would at a minimum need boats. Boats are good. They could be tracked, fired upon, and sunk by our new navy. Californistan would turn into a latinx/soiboi/cat lady verison of Haiti, deforested, drought ridden, with a feudal population resorting to cannibalism after they ran out of all the felines.
Wasn't this fragmented thing done by James Joyce in Ulysses?
"I didn't say their crappy shithole of a country wouldn't collapse in 5 years, I'm just saying they should have their own."
Oh, I don't disagree, I'm on your side here. I'm just saying that those idiots don't have faith enough in their own ideas to take a chance on going it on their own without the backup of being able to pick the pockets of the productive when their crap ideas turn to... well, crap.
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