📘 2+2=4 Vol. 6: Collapsing societies, censorship and corruption
This week: Why diversity is not a panacea, why "Pride Month" has lost its meaning and the world war on free speech.
In his famous essay “The Crack-Up”, written in 1936 for Esquire, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes two different kinds of “blows” that have the power to break you: On the one hand, there are “the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside – the ones you remember and blame things on.” On the other hand, he describes “another sort of blow that comes from within – that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it.” This second kind of breakage, says Fitzgerald, “happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.”
As philosopher Peter Hughes has argued, these two kinds of personal collapse can be applied to society as well. The “big sudden blows” have, luckily, become rather sparse today. Though there are still wars or pandemic outbreaks that can bring societies to the verge of collapse, we have created systems that now in large part withstand events like natural disasters, droughts or famines. Instead, it is the “blow that comes from within” that has undeniably been debilitating Western societies over the last few decades: Corruption has seeped into our institutions like poison, ideology has captured public discourse and pushed out common sense, and censorship has become the norm by disguising itself as a “war on misinformation”. Moral values like equality of opportunity, hard work, selflessness, humility and the quest for truth have been hollowed out and replaced by pseudo-values such as “diversity”, “equity”, “inclusion”, “pride” and “anti-hate speech measures”. And so “almost without our knowing”, we now find ourselves in a society that is about to crack.
But even as things might seem dark and in dire need of renewal, we should not forget that it is up to us to keep going forward. Fitzgerald himself, even though he was at his lowest point as he wrote “The Crack-Up”, still managed to give us a valuable and hopeful piece of advice in his essay that still holds today: “One should […] be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
#1 Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis
by Harold Robertson (Palladium Mag, published on June 1, 2023)
An asset class head and institutional investor, Haroldson writes with sober precision and utmost clarity about the disintegration of American society in face of a raging competence crisis. As diversity has become more important than meritocracy over the past decades – thanks to affirmative action and the new holy triad of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” –, the US is now lacking capable workforce in many different areas, from engineering to law to Navy recruits. Haroldson’s article provides valuable insight into the mechanisms of this complex system we call society and shows how declining competency in the name of promoting diversity does not only cost lives, but will eventually lead to the collapse of society as we know it. An important and intriguing read.
#2 What is the point of Pride? Douglas Murray & Julie Bindel
by Spectator TV (The Spectator, published on June 10, 2023)
Full disclosure: I’ve been a fan of Douglas Murray’s impeccable wit, eloquence and sarcasm ever since stumbling upon him on the Joe Rogan Podcast about a year ago. In this episode, a wonderfully respectful and calm Lukas Degutis is joined by both Murray and Julie Bindel to talk about the meaning of “Pride Month”1 (or what’s left of it). It is absolutely refreshing to have two public figures who stand on very different sides of the political spectrum (Murray is conservative, Bindel is progressive) discuss various topics with common sense and straightforwardness, and eventually agree on many points. Murray’s dry humor and and Bindel’s frankness are a delight and observing their facial expressions as they listen to each other elaborate their arguments is just priceless.
#3 The diversity trap
by Douglas Murray (The Spectator, published on June 24, 2023)
Talking about Douglas Murray, his newest column for The Spectator is an equally recommendable piece. In it, Murray argues that making diversity the be-all and end-all of politics is bound to fail because the smorgasbord of different cultures, ethnicities, sexualities and religions is not without its pitfalls. While a peaceful co-existence between different opinions and beliefs is possible, once you start mandating certain opinions and beliefs and force people to not only accept these ideas, but even promote them even though they go against their own viewpoint, you will experience pushback – and rightfully so.
#4 The new world war on free speech
by Michael Shellenberger (UnHerd, published on June 19, 2023)
Michael Shellenberger, along with journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, has been one of the key figures to expose the web of corrupt entanglements that exists between politics, the industry and the media in a series of Twitter threads called the Twitter Files. He and his colleagues have uncovered that American citizens – and most citizens of the Western world – have been manipulated and lied to by what Shellenberger names the “Censorship Industrial Complex”: a shockingly intricate network of corruption and collusion between government agencies, Big Media, Big Tech, Big Pharma, NGOs, and military, intelligence and security organisations that seek to control the narrative. Shellenberger lays out how censorship has become the rule, not the exception. And it’s ramping up.
#5 The Joe Rogan Experience with Robert Kennedy Jr.
by Joe Rogan (The Joe Rogan Experience, published on June 15, 2023)
Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, whether you consider yourself progressive, liberal or conservative, or politically homeless (like me), Joe Rogan’s conversation with Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr. is not to be missed. As someone who has grown up under the most exceptional circumstances – his father, a US Senator, was assassinated in 1968 and so was his famous uncle President John F. Kennedy five years prior –, RFK Jr. has deep insight into the intricacies of American politics but also seems to have retained his humanity. With Rogan, RFK Jr. gets the time and space to lay out his viewpoints on political, environmental and public health issues, and makes quite a strong case for why we should neither entrust our lives with Big Pharma nor with the federal health agencies. Of course, it took big media outlets like the Washington Post, the LA Times or Time Magazine about ten seconds to discredit RFK Jr. as a loony conspiracy theorist who is not only “dead wrong about vaccines” but also a “threat to your health”. I recommend you listen for yourself and make up your own mind instead.2
For more interesting reads on Pride Month, make sure to check out 2+2=4 Vol. 5 Pride (Month) and Prejudice from two weeks ago.
Both the New York Post and Tucker Carlson have done a more favorable coverage of RFK Jr.
"Instead, it is the 'blow that comes from within” that has undeniably been debilitating Western societies over the last few decades' ..."
When foundational principles, ones that have served as the bedrock for self or society, are found to hold very little water, the consequences can be devastating. Not much in the way of hyperbole, as I know from experience, to say that the very ground shakes under our feet. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said:
"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so."
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/