I have finally rediscovered my love for cooking. Here’s what I do:

1. Don’t follow the recipe. The chef can’t write and the writer can’t cook. A lot of it is nonsense. If you think you know better, you do.

2. Do whatever you want. Don’t oversalt it or burn it and everything else can be fixed with more cookery.

3. Don’t cook for 2 hours unless you are having fun goofing around in the kitchen for 2 hours or are making a holiday dish everyone’s been wanting all year.

4. Learn all the shortcuts and try your own.

5. Eat while you’re cooking to see if it’s the way you want it and use all those spices and sauces to see what they do.

6. Easy mode: To make anything delicious, add salt, oil/fat, and acid. That will make everything but burned or oversalted stuff into edible. Also, pepper is somehow underrated despite being everywhere and in everything.

7. Don’t eat it in 10 minutes. You won’t digest it properly and it will add to your stress rather than relieving it. Take your time eating; the people making you rush are the problem not the food.

Agreed. It evokes a whole story. Either the Paladin is so overcommitted to their work to such a degree that they are willing to go on dangerous adventures or the society is so legalistic it’s the Paladin’s duty to accompany their cases wherever they go without exceptions. Alternatively, maybe the Paladin wanted to be an adventurer anyway to escape their boring life as a parole officer and found just such a situation that they can fufill their desires and duties at the same time.

Lived communally for years. It really depends on who else is living with you in the community because you must cooperate with them. The system works really well and I recommend anyone try out living in one for a while, but it’s very different than living individualistically. That being said it can also work too well and you may find yourself not leaving or interacting outside the commune for weeks or months at a time and falling out of contact with the outside world.

Anti-social socialists are an absolutely fascinating internet phenomenon. I have met a handful in real life, but they’re more tolerated for their merits than any kind of influential when it comes to face to face dialogue and praxis.

This appears to be stupid, and it is, but it’s mostly evil. Teaching children to accept absurdities and distrust evidence to make them easier to control.

And hawks. There have been posters all over my neighborhood for a missing cat and they keep putting them up. I’ve seen those hawks in action and nothing they can catch stands a chance.

I think a lot of people are neglecting to think of Biden’s lifetime record in public office. The United States is the nation on Earth with the greatest proportion of its own citizens imprisoned and we have Biden’s 1994 crime bill in large part to thank for that. Unfortunately it wasn’t terribly shocking when he went on to be more supportive of the Palestinian genocide than any other president in US history other than Trump.

Empiricism. We need to acknowledge that not everyone considers evidence when determining truth and encourage it way more than we do.

The most central characteristic of whiteness is a belief in racism. It feels disingenuous because there is no white race other than what we’ve constructed socially for political purposes. English culture exists, Latvian culture exists, Russian culture exists, many American cultures exist, and white culture doesn’t exist and never has.

I wish. You’re giving right-wingers way too much credit. Most of those craven idiots do it for free for the opportunity to lose themselves in a gaggle of other morons. They are vulnerable in a way that is easy to exploit for people who know how to do it.

Also, a point of note for my Hitler example. I do not think that Hitler was a monster or particularly unique. I think Hitler was a man similar to millions of people who exist on Earth today. Some of these individuals capable of what Hitler did have chosen instead to behave differently, while many who desire to emulate Hitler are unable to do so because of the state of their societies. I don’t think Hitler was a special being who single-handedly enthralled an entire nation and forced them to do things they didn’t want to do. I think there were many elements in their society which contributed to Hitler’s rise and continued support despite his absurd statements and atrocities. While we can never live in a world totally free of people like Hitler or people who want a leader like Hitler, I think a world where people like Hitler can’t access the power to do great evil is possible.

Sure, I’ll consider psychopathy as a disability rather than an illness. Regardless, it’s pathological.

I think your point about proper support and monitoring is key. Why do we have the problem of psychopaths masking their lack of empathy creating success for themselves in a way that doesn’t involve human connection? What if they didn’t have to mask their personalities or tendencies at all? If I met someone and understood they were a psychopath incapable of empathy but trying to live a peaceful stable life for their own self-interest, which includes not risking that stability by causing grave harm, I would engage with that person until such a point that they expressed a contemptible opinion or did something unsavory. This is the same metric I would use with anyone. Of course I would understand that because the psychopath lacks empathy there are bad things they might be more likely to do, but in a society which is equipped for psychopaths hopefully they would also understand the greater risks for themselves due to their pathology.

I don’t think there are natural born killers even if I do understand that some pathologies, whether inborn or trauma-induced, would make the act of killing unburdonsome to that person. Personally, I can come up with a very long list of why I shouldn’t kill a person other than that I would feel bad about it. I don’t think all people who wouldn’t feel bad about it are unaware of the myriad other consequences which come with causing such grave harm of this or other kinds. If someone truly doesn’t understand in any way why they shouldn’t kill someone and then go on to kill someone, I think that is much more of a problem of the society. That would indicate a severe lack of education and support in addition to their pathology.

To clarify, I am not anti-judgement. I think people’s behaviors should be judged good or bad regardless of whether anyone would judge that individual or their group to be good or bad. Also, I can pass character judgment on the dead because there are no longer unknown variables. I can condemn Hitler as an evil person because as he exists right now as an idea, he is pure evil. The historical human Hitler I can condemn worse because even though he was fully capable of good and fully capable of not doing what he did, he chose to do evil consistently. I condemn historical human Hitler not because I believe he was an evil being incapable of doing good, but that he was capable of both good and evil and chose to do evil. In my mind this is a harsher judgement than excusing bad behavior because of their corrupt soul or any such nonsense.

I’m saying we should take sociopathic tendencies a bit more seriously and address them directly with trained professionals rather than waiting for them to cause damage. That would require judging people’s character.

This is where we agree. If every narcissist, sociopath, psychopath, pedophile, etc could be open about their tendencies and receive specialized assistance and accommodation before they commit a crime due to mismanaged illness it would be ideal. The only thing I disagree about is that these are not representations of internal character but are illnesses. For example, the pedophile who gets accommodation and doesn’t go near children is doing less evil and probably has a better character than a preacher who uses his position to abuse young boys because he likes the feeling of power but isn’t a pedophile (this happens).

I have indeed been the innocent victim of narcissistic abuse. It would indeed have been much better if my parents worked through their trauma before me or during my childhood rather than never. Narcissistic tendencies weren’t considered dangerous when they were young though, as evidenced by almost the entire boomer generation. If we were living in stronger communities cooperating with one another instead of competing, I think those narcissistic tendencies either never would have existed to begin with or would have been recognized and counterbalanced by other community members. I do not think I would have been better off if they were punished, but it’s likely it would have made my situation worse. At this point I’m more concerned with my own well-being than getting retribution.

I think evil behavior should be denounced and everyone should be encouraged in every way on every level to do good rather than evil to one another. I want to be clear that I am expressing that no one has the excuse of their poor internal nature to do evil things. Everyone is capable of both good and evil and everyone regardless of their condition is fully responsible for their behavior. There’s no obfuscating evil in my arguments. I am arguing that the social structure supporting instead of preventing and/or condemning these evil behaviors is the problem rather than some people being good and others being evil.

Yes, our system is cutrently built for that. An optimal system wouldn’t allow for it. We have obviously not discovered the optimal system yet but we can identify the fundamental issues of our present systems. Prison is another fundamentally flawed system which causes a lot of its own problems. I would prefer a victim focused restorative model to imprisoning groups of people based on diagnostic critera written by people who think you need to imprison groups of people based on diagnostic critera.

Fortunately in your example, the general can still serve the general as anti-social personality disorders will always be in the minority especially if that society functions properly for the general welfare of its people. As for doing it naturally, we naturally live in hunter-gatherer bands. Society is fully socially constructed and requires all of us to resist many aspects of our natures for it to function in a way that benefits us.

What I am arguing for is that these individuals are honestly acknowledged for their tendencies and deficits so that they can get the help they need while serving in a capacity which limits their ability to harm others due to their negligence and benefits others by utilizing their strengths. A psychopath can understand that it is in their self-interest to live in a stable friendly society. Honestly I don’t personally know to integrate a full-blown narcissist, but I expect it’s possible. I don’t think it’s possible or advisable to make any effort to remove all psychopaths and narcissists from society since eugenic thinking is responsible for many of the worst atrocities in human history.

Being a narcissistic psychopath is a circumstance, not an expression of internal evil. Narcissistic psychopaths are also capable of doing the right things for the right reasons as well as for the wrong reasons. The reason I advocate against guessing people’s internal morality is mainly practical for my own relationships, but also is to encourage people to fix systemic problems instead of pretending some malicious force of evil is omnipresently working against the interests of mankind as many religious people believe. In a better system, narcissistic psychopaths could get what they want without harming others for their ends.

In what way?

I think it’s dangerous to consider anyone to be a fundamentally good person or a fundamentally bad person. It’s impossible to know what someone is internally and I am not a believer in determinism. Every person is complex and capable of good and evil acts depending on their circumstances.

Especially when you live in a cutthroat competitive culture in which what little to win is jealously guarded by narcissistic psychopaths, many people understand at least on some level that public behavior is a performance intended to reap rewards rather than an honest presentation of oneself. Good and evil is inapplicable here. Our system is amoral, and we human animals are just going to do what we consider to be a good idea at a time and only a few of us really consider the ethics of what we’re going to do before we do it, and the few of us capable of that only do it some of the time.

Someone can do the right thing for the right reasons, the right thing for the wrong reasons, the wrong thing for the right reasons, or the wrong things for the wrong reasons. I can never know their internal part, just base my expectations on how their behavior effects me and others. I wouldn’t trust anyone until I consider them to be trustworthy, though I can’t expect to always be right about that either.

I went to college and learned that not only was pretty much everything I was raised to believe as a young conservative a lie, but they were obvious lies that didn’t bear any scrutiny whatsoever. I learned everything that made me really uncomfortable when I was young was because I was surrounded by people living their entire lives in bad faith while I was genuinely curious about investigating things and learning why people thought what they did. The other cultists recognized I did not belong in the cult before I did, though my parents still emphatically try to get me to reintegrate because they are absolutely certain that their evidence-free belief system is in my best interests. I was never really integrated in the first place so I didn’t lose much other than a lot of very evil shit.

Most right wing conservatives I’ve talked to are concerned with family, security, economic stability and freedom. They don’t care if you live in a commune or if you want to run a redistribution fund so long as no one is being compelled to contribute. Further more for any public project they are very interested in how it’s going to be paid for and who it will be paid for by. These are admittedly important questions.

I don’t think most reasonable people need to be compelled to support their community, and as I mentioned above scrutiny is necessary. However, I think plutocrats are unreasonable because they were never made to grow beyond the stage most of us do when we learn not everything belongs to us. They should be compelled to first be treated for their maladaptive development and then to join us in society when they understand why they should.

The socialist on the other hand seems to dismiss individual liberties in favor of the community. And in here lies the problem. It’s not about profit. It’s about consent. Look even if you got the most giving community minded individualists together the sticking point would still be consent. Did they choose to give you their money. Even if they support the project and ideals behind it. A conservative and a liberal both believe in supporting families but the conservative wants to keep their money to donate to a local charity whereas the liberal thinks it should be taxed and redistributed into a welfare fund. They both believe in the same thing but have different economic policies about how to achieve them.

There’s a balance. We are individuals and also members of the human race making us social by nature. I think all individual freedoms should be protected to the extent that they don’t cause harm to others. I don’t consider offending personal sensibilities to be a harm, either. It makes sense to reasonable people to be part of a community and I personally believe tolerance is a community sustaining value. In a healthy society, there shouldn’t be a need for compulsion. There are steps to be taken from an unhealthy society to make it healthy and those steps should be carefully considered, but are necessary to prevent degradation. Doing something and doing nothing are both risks.

How would you codify redistribution and public ownership without licensing agreements or by utilizing violence? Really I’m not sure how you get around private ownership without violence. Copyleft licensing is based on copyright and parenting and is based on the notion that he who creates owns, and therefore he that creates can also give it away. But you wouldn’t have patents and copyright without private ownership.

Violence from whom? So much of liberal capitalism is completely constructed and depends entirely on participation of members who have faith in that system. A massive general strike could bring the entire system down very quickly, and I would bet that in this case every liberal government in the world would immediately act to compel the labor which isn’t being offered by any means necessary. Trump sure as hell would. If we stopped doing this and started doing something else, it could be done peacefully but the established order would not peacefully allow that to happen.

And if there is no private ownership, say of land or water or natural resources, then what then? Can anyone utilize anything? Why own anything or pay taxes if you don’t own anything? And we’re back to the gift economy issue again. Contribute vs accrue. So why not start with making it voluntary to begin with?

Anarchists like to say, “Anarchism doesn’t mean no rules, it means no rulers.” If a village is living in freedom, would they respect the freedom of one villager to start burning down houses, even without a leader to tell them whether it’s allowed? Of course not. People generally aren’t that stupid. A community can manage resources and a network of communities could theoretically manage resources on a larger scale. I can’t tell you exactly what the final answer would be, but it doesn’t sound impossible to me for people to govern themselves democratically in the absence of kings or executives.

Also please explain to me if all capitalism is right wing how a communist country like China is a capitalist powerhouse. Is China left wing or right wing from your perspective?

I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would consider China a communist country if they’re arguing in good faith. Their government is an interesting experiment with many socialist oriented accomplishments such as minimum standards of living, full employment, and relative stability contrasting our boom bust cycles. That being said having a non-democratic government run by the upper class, especially when the government of exclusively upper class people determine who becomes upper class, is far from my ideal. Having a government as powerful as theirs does appear to keep Capitalism in check better than we can, though. I’ve heard serious arguments that it’s a decent transitional government to a communist government, but honestly it looks like the establishment over there like it how it is and would rather grow their power and wealth than transition to communism. Rather than an authoritarian government keeping capitalism in check, I would rather a democratic government with universal ownership and investment by the whole people. No despots publicly or privately is what I personally prefer.

This was much longer than I expected. I’ll reply to your next post some time soon.