Can Ivanka deter his unchecked twitter spree inclinations.

Can Ivanka deter his unchecked his twitter spree inclinations. 

Is US and British democracy manufactured by half educated opinion makers

 Is it true the that the elite in Britain and the US maintain power by controlling attitudes and opinions?  The distinguished Noam Chomsky and his many adherents on the defeated radical left say the masses are brainwashed into voting against their interests by journalists, who are under the control of rich proprietors and advertisers.
On the face of it this would appear to be true, the 'left' control the UK state news outlet the BBC, in the US Fox news is the sole stand alone news outlet on the 'right' swamped by all the
other 'leftist' media outlets
 or so they 'the media' believe

Well, it is undeniably true. that 'they' the opinion makers  are under the control of something - rich proprietors and advertisers
they are not free agents for they sing like canaries from the same hymn sheet  - ever read an article with a rightist view in the New York Times or the Guardian?  So what one gets from these 'educated' journalists is a biased and predictable mantra which the electorate, surprise, surprise, recognised and saw through.

We are not as dumb as we look to you

So one could argue that in the UK and the US there is a malign leftist totality that manufactures democratic consent and thereby democracy is “manufactured”.  One could argue that this is true of the left and Obama, and his millions of small donations that got him elected and the argument goes he got elected through 'mob' rule.

However if the Brits and US citizens have supposedly been brainwashed by a totalitarian press and news outlets how come Brexit and Trump?

Well the charge still stands - what happened was  that there was a 'thinking' concensus that recognised and then rejected these faux new outlets for what they were - half educated elites (the ratio of leftist leaning Professors in Journalism Colleges is 30 to 1 in Engineering it is 2 to 1) intent on feathering their ideological nests as panic set in; '...what is going to happen to my gardener and my maid they are lovely people, I am sure they are but so are the indigenous people that are being denied because you employ them on lower salaries.

Obama's legacy is Trump and the tacit civil war that the US is now undergoing.

While Obama, who left his Presidency having borrowed more money than all the other US presidents combined and left the US Treasury trillions of dollars in debt,  lunches with Bono holidays with Richard Branson and is continually cheered on by the coastal elites  - talk about brainwashing. 'We go high while you go low.'  Tee hee.

The deplorables and the irredeemable elite look at each other through a concept

So do these two strands of US, Trump & UK Brexit society if only they could look at each other clearly
with world-old eyes, and see simply human beings, 
weak and pitiable, like me and I venture your wrath, you.

Do the 'deplorables' - the humiliated - see 
more clearly the reality of the lives of those who humiliate them 
than the humiliators themselves can. Here a kind of clairvoyance is required; a kind of wine into water transubstantiation required to really 'get' what the other is actually thinking - for there is a  capacity for knowledge that escapes those who initiate the humiliation. This knowledge of the elites against us, the deplorables, is attained through the body, a visceral hatred of being duped by
smooth talkin' smart asses.

The humiliators  ascribe others of beliefs, intentions, expectations or reactions that stigmatize them, this  demeaning, or derogatory estimations of one’s capabilities, preferences, aptitudes and desires is a flawed think tank

For it came to bite them through Brexit and the US election.  Holland is looming and so is pauvre France

What about our liberatory potential? Yes us.

'We are voicing our protests again the stigmata of degradation';
 sullied by Clinton's disparaging descriptors there ensues resentment, frustration, and anger 

'So we are seeking Liberatory potential of a second sight that penetrates to the contradictions of the dominant PC culture'

....well, I think that is what they are saying, if not, I am saying it for them.

Yes, we, Caucasians who have suffered shame, humiliation and deep insult; the name calling, 'white suprenacists - tell that to the millions of disadvatnaged as the 'elites' pursue their globalisation from that lofty Tower of the Swamp's aggrandizement

The religion of whiteness and how it feels now to be a problem.

How does it feel to be a problem? as if  one was homo accidentalis.

Here I am locked into my religion of whiteness.  Sometimes I see people look me up and down and their expression is one of  'I wonder what bad luck she is bringing?' 

This I know about my 'whiteness' the epistemological significance of double consciousness is that one of the two perspectives implicit in it—that of the white world—is necessarily partial, yet positions itself as universal, or used to before the US and Europe was flooded by immigration
and so whiteness is a form of consciousness that is beginning to hide itself. 

 I thought I was a european Prospero but I am morphing into a  Caliban, a Calibanization of 'whiteness' is taking place in the US and Europe.  Look to the fall of the Roman Empire for your history lesson.

To Self-help or not to Self-help, that is the Question?

                                          To Self-help or not to Self-help, that is the Question?

                        

Researching for a Self-help book that you are writing does not justify you claiming to be an expert on the subject but it does allow you, after sufficient delving, to claim to be a conduit of information. Such as the fact that laboratory mice live twice as long in daylight as they do under artificial light. This is not pseudo science. Yet as I work on a book about the benefits of light to our daily lives. I realise it is becoming harder and harder to rebut the critics who deem the mushrooming array of anonymouses and its offshoot industry, Self- help books, to be just a synonym for ‘psychobabble’.

For there is now a pejorative ring to the term ‘Self-help’, but is it justified?

Amongst the circle of people I know criticisms of the Self-help phenomenon are pretty vocal. “These days, you cope with the burden of your failings by redefining them. Smoking, stealing, having illicit sex, none of it is any longer your doing. Because you eradicate the problem by couching it in destigmatising language and ‘Hey Presto’ none of it is your responsibility, because guess what, you had an ‘illness’. We have been fed the disease model; drug abuse, sex addiction, compulsive eating, compulsive lying, compulsive shopping, compulsive gambling - now they are all deemed diseases.”

Then there was an uber sceptic friend of mine, over a recent lunch. “Even liberated women friends of mine are buying into ‘this’. What’s the latest ‘premenstrual syndrome’ and ‘postpartum depression?’ women are being conditioned to think of themselves as slaves to their hormonal governance. God Bless America for exporting their 12 step template. By the way if you are in healthy and loving relationship and you want to come on one of these more extremes self-help programmes, then you better start questioning that relationship, for you have to forsake this excessive or unhealthy concern for others - for in the twelve-step universe of self help, such excessive concern for one other person constitutes the pitiable emotional quagmire of co-dependency. And if you think that is rubbish then you are ‘in denial’. What Self-help has done is champions the selfish self.”  With friends like these...

However you would have to agree that a 12 step victimisation template has seeped into our cultural consciousness. For AA, NA, OA, brand of mainstream victimisation will seek to explain to you that every human frailty is a function of some hardwired predisposition or inescapable social root. You have to forgive yourself for all those awful things you did, because you only did those beastly things because you were trapped by your makeup or environment. Anyway if you have failings, just dig deep enough for the fatalistic patterns in your personality and you will be afforded an acceptable rationalisation. For there will always be a guilty fault line to blame releasing you of any responsibility; “Grandfather was an alcoholic,  Uncle Albert is as compulsive as a mountain rescue dog, and my grandmother... in fact all the females in my family ran to fat. No wonder I am putting on so much weight.”

Now my sceptical friend is asking me, “So what is all this guff about light?”                                  “Well SAD, or seasonal affective disorder is an illness recognised by the World Health Organisation.”                                                                                                                       “What causes it?”                                                                                                                          “It is said to be caused by an imbalance between the hormone Melatonin and the neuro transmitter Serotonin.  Melatonin is sometime referred as ‘the Hormone of Darkness’. It increases as we get sleepy at night. The yang of this yin is Serotonin: a neuro transmitter which has various functions including the regulation of mood, appetite, sleep, muscle contraction, and some cognitive functions including memory and appetite. An imbalance between the two is said to cause SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).                                                                                                         “So if our ‘Business Minister’ Lord Mandelson was a hormone he would be Melatonin,” she offers chirpily.

I endeavour to keep our conversation under the umbrella of science, so I say to her, “If I were to light a candle and put it one metre away from you it would produce one Lux of light.  Lux is the term used to evaluate luminosity. The light bulb in the room (an environmental 40 watt) is giving out 400 Lux;  on a gloomy day like this, if we were to go out for a walk now, we would immediately be getting 20,000 Lux.”                                                                                        “By just being in the daylight? Well, let’s get out there,” says my friend with new found enthusiasm, and we set off to explore the beneficence of nature.

We walk and look at the trees, the leafs are changing colour. The park we are walking in is by a school; students assemble in knots on the benches and grass. “Did you know there is less crime where there are green spaces.”                                                                                                                                    “Is that a fact?”                                                                                                                                                “Yes, it is.”                                                                                                                                            I also remind her that there has been a massive change in the last century in how we live.  There is 1440 minutes in the day, and it is approximated that one minute of that day is spent in the countryside. It is estimated now that we spend 95% of our time indoors. These days it is we live under artificial light practically ‘24/7’. We pass another school, it is a gloomy Victorian building and I think of research on light where students improve academically if placed near windows and if the room is generally lighter. There have been numerous studies done to verify this.

In the distance we see another architectural monstrosity, a prison. UK and US citizens seem to be desirous of this architecture of cruelty. For a prison is supposed to be a place of punishment; therefore, it should look like a place of punishment. Unlike in some Scandinavian countries where prisons are built with the intention of the inmates getting as much light as possible; the Swedes and Norwegian realising that imaginative use of light in design will cut future social costs. It would appear if you have less light you think differently about it. Once in Stockholm I saw a tough guy walk into a Bar, slap his kroner on the counter and say ‘Give me a beer and a light box.”

. “If we widen the parameters,” I said on leaving her at the Underground, “Self-help can be seen as lots of things.                                                                                                                        “Such as?”                                                                                                                                  “Well, the Bible for instance, is that not a self-help manual?”                                                                           “I don’t need help on bringing my soul nearer to God.”                                                                   “Well, how about a book on improving your chess by bringing your pawns nearer your king, that’s self-help too.”                                                                                                                                   She seems unconvinced

I leave her at the underground station and return home.  It is getting darker; I have a desire to get home and pull up the covers - my hibernation mode kicking in. This hardwired feeling for us to hide away, is due to the hormonal changes from decreased light and temperature, So If you feel like retreating in the winter you are reacting to our animal urge to take cover and lie dormant. The problem with our current mode of dealing with our hardwired hibernation instinct – being seduced by  a night in front of that giant blinking eye in  the corner (television) is just a mode for piling on the ‘carbs’. Added to this is the amount of time we spend in cars and it is no wonder we have a problem with obesity. Simply put, we have got to get out more and on foot to get our daily dose of Lux.

I look up at the sky; there are rays of light shafting through the clouds. I think of the 16 year old Einstein out walking and wishing he could jump on one of those rays.  So I am in good company as I contemplate another evening of research on light.

SAD Overcoming Seasonal Affective Disorder by Fiona Marshall and Dr Peter Cheevers is published by Sheldon Press.

SAD facts:                                                                                                                                          SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is recognised as an illness by the World Health Organisation

SAD symptoms:                                                                                                             Lethargy, low self esteem and depression. The usual characteristics of recurrent winter depression include oversleeping, daytime fatigue, carbohydrate craving and weight gain. Additionally, there are the usual features of depression, especially decreased sexual interest, lethargy, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, lack of interest in normal activities, and social withdrawal

Who does SAD affect?                                                                                                             10% of the population. Those living in Northern latitudes (Scandinavians) and those who live in the northern United States and Canada are eight times as likely to experience it as those living farther south. It affects woman more than men. Four times as many women develop it as men.

Patterns of SAD:                                                                                                              Symptoms of winter SAD usually begin in October or November and subside in March or April. The most common characteristic of people with winter SAD is their reaction to changes in environmental light. Patients living at different latitudes note that their winter depressions are longer and more profound the farther north they live. Patients with SAD also report that their depression worsens or reappears whenever the weather is overcast at any time of the year, or if their indoor lighting is decreased.

Treatments for SAD:                                                                                                         Phototherapy is commercially available in the form of light boxes, which are used for approximately 30 minutes daily. The light required must be of sufficient brightness, approximately 25 times as bright as a normal living room light. Contrary to prior theories, the light does not need to be actual daylight from the sun. It seems that it is quantity, not necessarily quality of light that matters in the light treatment of seasonal affective disorder.  Light boxes are now freely available in stores and on the Internet. To be effective a light box must emit a minimum of 2500 Lux. Most All the light boxes emit 10000 Lux, giving the user an efficient and speedy treatment     

SAD and the natural way:                                                                                                               By far the most effective way to get rapid relief from SAD is to get more exposure to natural daylight. Not only is this the most effective treatment, it is also completely free!

What the left and the US now need is the Britney Spears theory of political action

The Britney Spears theory of political action.

Britney Spears ideological, political message – resides in their very abstention from delivering a message. This abstention is sustained by an implicit trust in one’s government. When the enemy attacks, don’t think, just do your duty.

This is what Slavoj Žižek call s the  ‘Britney Spears’ Theory of Action’, because, effectively, he recalls two years ago seeing Britney Spears interviewed on MTV.

Britney was asked  “what does she think about Iraq?” and so on. She says, “I don’t quite understand it, all I know is that, at a he certain point, we ordinary people should simply trust our President.”
Source - Slavoj Žižek, Why Only an Atheist Can Believe: Politics Between Fear and Trembling

Who is that guy in the velvet collared coat?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQBn0hmCp8M

How Liberals try to stigmatise those who disagree

Many a time and oft people ave  been shouted down by a Liberal when choosing to disagree with them.

In a Tourette's whirl of name calling and finger pointing those with an opposing view are
stigmatizes, ''racist homophobe' etc and who wants that stigmata?

So you walk away from such discussion thinking,my God, I hope I am not a racist
and the liberal name caller continues in the comfort of his/her (supposed) moral authority and superiority. They don't know it but their Liberalism is a religion without a God and their fury and fundamentalism has a warrior (moral crusader) for it seeks not to educate but to annihilate those who disagree i,e Trump and  his 'white' deplorable'' tribe.

Push aside their finger jabbing, frothing and name calling and endeavour to explain to them that their
beloved ''morals'' are not facts, but theories which when boiled down are no more than opinions. Say to them because you feel is is 'good'that does not make it 'right''. Explain to them that they are a process  a mode of  thinking arising (in the West) out of the 60s.

And find that you ears will burn as you get the hell out of there with then hollering after you
in loud speak mode Racist Homophobe Bigot, Migogynist et al,




But why this fusillade of name calling, of putting you in your place, it is a defensive action if nothing else, apart from wishing to brand you, to label you, marginalise you  and stigmatise you.

When will the left's virtue signalling cease?

The term virtue signalling refers to the act of expressing opinions with the sole intention of demonstrating your moral correctness on the issue.

Mirror Self-recognition - do animals know

Mirror Self-recognition

Some research aims to explore what individuals know about their own minds. One area of much attention has been mirror self-recognition (MSR). In this paradigm, developed by psychologist Gordon Gallup, subjects are surreptitiously marked and then given a mirror. “Passing” the MSR test involves touching the mark more frequently when there is a mirror available than when there is not. Gallop argued that passing MSR entails that the animal has a concept of self (Gallup 1970), though others dispute this claim. While it was once thought to be a rare behavior, limited to some of the great apes, today many species have been studied and at least some positive results have been reported for the following species:

Species	Study
Chimpanzees	Lin et al. 1992; Swartz & Evans 1991
Gorillas	Shumaker & Swartz 2002
Orangutans	Swartz et al. 1999
Bottlenosed dolphins	Marino et al. 1994; Reiss & Marino 2001
Asian elephant	Plotnik et al. 2006
Magpies	Prior et al. 2008
Rhesus Monkeys	Rajala et al. 2010

Deconstructing empathy - so nice that you empathise with what I am saying

Empathy, an orientation of spirit decidedly different from sympathy, has become central to our moral universe.

 We celebrate it as the hallmark of a noble spirit, a pillar of social justice, and the gateway to reaching our highest human potential — a centerpiece of our very humanity. 

And yet this conception of empathy is a little more than a century old and originated in art: It only entered the modern lexicon in the early twentieth century, when it was used to describe the imaginative act of projecting oneself into a work of art in an effort to understand why art moves us.

The veil of ignorance that undergirds the moral assertions of the left.

There is a view held that  moral assertions have ‘no objective validity whatsoever’.
Why?
For as ‘pure expressions of feeling’, they ‘do not come under the category of truth and falsehood.
 They are unverifiable for the same reason as a cry of pain or a word of command is unverifiable – because they do not express genuine propositions.
This leaves us little room for moral deliberation or for rational argument about moral issues.
What makes a moral assertion true is not anything about what it apparently refers to (the actions of people and their effects on human welfare, for example) but simply something about the state of the speaker. I may hold this moral view sincerely, but that does not mean your sincerity is indistinguishable  from truth.
 So we move on to Beyond Subjective Morality

Subjectivism  can be interpreted as the residue left over from a failed Kantianism and his categorical imperative.
There is a kind of subjective universalism in anti Trump protest and what is happening across EuropeThe anti Trump protesters in a form of frightening certainty if confronted with a rigorous argumentabout their pseudo morality with no doubt argue in their certainty that our  moral stance is  is arbitrary but we are still prepared to say that everyone else should do the same in similar circumstances’. 
However there  are various strands to the moral debate1.  amoralism  - It’s simply a question of what I want’ - denying that moral judgment can be made at all.
2.  personalism - ‘I can only say what’s right for me to do – I can’t judge for others, denies that moral judgment can be made of other people
3   relativism  - ‘I should do what’s right from my perspective, others should do what’s right from theirs but relativism has the unpalatable implication that Hitler acted rightly so long as he believed in what he was doing.4.  Universalism   faulty and  unstable, since it is hard to see how, if one’s own moral opinions cannot be supported in terms that claim the allegiance of others, it can be legitimate to impose them on others5. Relativism - 
A moral position held to be valid  must have requirements 1. have a rationally unquestionable basis, 2. consist in principles that hold without exception, 3. give an answer to any possible moral question, 4. abstract from all human interests and concerns, 5. be consistent with conscientious moral decisions,  6. determine obligations with strict impartiality.
Some defending morality, i,e the philosophical praetorian guard make impartiality the hallmark of morality.
Suitably generalised. Thus, one could say, ‘Everyone should defend his own country,’ but not ‘Everyone should defend my country.’But how one would arrive at impartiality?  Rawls’s conception in A Theory of Justice of a ‘veil of ignorance’, blotting out all information that is (according to Rawls) morally irrelevant, would be one construction, but an inherently controversial one. 
What one has in the leftist  protests is, morally grandstanding  -  a blank wall of pure assertionbut what undergirds this view is the  interminability of fundamental moral disagreements, i.e can one hold a sustainable moral view, and if so, where did that moral view come from and how is it and was it constituted.

it is not post mortems we need it is ''pre mortems''

You are anticipating a heavy day, you know it is going to be stressful
what is required here is an awareness that stress heightens cortisol production
and indeed leads to cloudy  thinking in many cases.

So rather than reflecting the day after your evaluations of your success or failure on that stressful day
far better to have put the same level of energy into your pre mortem as you do in your post mortem
(a futile task as you cannot change anything.

A cushion for life

You are on a place and you wonder has got experience, you find he does not have that much experience but he has tenure! does that make you feel secure

You are undergoing a medical operation, you wonder does the Surgeon have experience
you are assured he has tenure - does that make you think, my God what ever happens he is going to be alright.

In academia tenure abounds. Especially in the Humanities, where the rations of leftist Professors to this on the right is 30 to 1.

And I thought a fundamental requirement in academia was balance.

As if someone was calling you from outside

S/he was aware of the calling now as if it were a
voice shouting outside a house so s/he followed this calling and
in the evening light touched hands that might light a fire that would burn up lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR3Vdo5etCQ

What changes you is to listen to people who have a diametrically opposed view to your own.

What changes you is to listen to people who have a diametrically opposed view to your own. This is sage advice and perhaps one might even this discover a certain kindness of spirit in those of an opposing view. It is one of the most disconcerting
fact in human experience, the kindliness of people you believe to be
thoroughly wrong, or so I have been told

In my study I  tried this as I watched Trump's address to Congress and watched the Demorats (sic)
clad in virgin white sitting on their hands.

I was becoming more agitated and incensed, the cat 'Hubert' looked up at me and then started hopping around and I thought, my God. it has swallowed the fish bone, but no, the fish bone was still on the plate daintily pushed to one side and  I realised Hubert was just emphasizing as you do, when you
 are a cat.  This was in stark contrast to its normal timid demeanour


There was another knock on the study door, be with you in a second, I offered
the knock door now was firm rap.  It was the housekeeper, I know that sounds of the Victorian era
but Mrs Smith does for me on a daily basis, and nothing capital punishment or war, Brexit, Text it or all the other its;
none of these things really gets hold of her imagination in comparison to people having a hearty breakfast, she just could not bear to think of people not having and enjoying their meals. It was her distinctive test
of an emotional state,  I knew this so I opened the door to see her standing  there with a tray full cholesterol laden English breakfast.









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