Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 72

You Can’t Get There From Here

This ain’t no paradise. This ain’t no garden of Earthly delights. And you can’t get there from here.

Time and again when reading history, we come across some horrible act of violence, some terrible event, and historians from the safety of their offices and the height of their theories ask how this was possible? How could humans do this beastly thing? How is it even possible that civilized man, civilized, I say, could do this or that or the other.

The truth is that humans, despite all o...

Thoughts on the Gaza Situation by Frank Hood

Thoughts on the Gaza Situation by Frank Hood

I’m a historian, and I have a hard time seeing a good way out of this situation. How many innocents are there in Gaza? I don’t know. History does not say much for their innocence. Islamic conquests have always been brutal with no regard for what they consider inhuman life–that is anyone who doesn’t submit to Allah. Unlike the voices you hear in the streets of the West, the Geneva Conventions allow for self-defense in kind. Use mustard gas on th...

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Yesterday, I linked one of Sargent Mom’s posts at Chicago Boyz (I still find it funny that my friend who is neither a boy nor from Chicago posts there) and on my reading it, and the comments before linking, I found that the very first comment was tediously familiar.

Note I’m not saying the commenter if a troll or ill intentioned. I’ve known him “from the blogs” for long before I started using my own name, and/or came out politically. I just think he’s not thinking things through. As aren...

Meme While Rome Burns!

Citizens of the World

One of the funniest conceit of our age has to be the idea that the sophisticated and “bien pensant” are “citizens of the world.”

I was profoundly amused that Alvin Toffler fell for his in his last book I read sometime in the 90s. Keep in mind that, despite everything else, I believe his Future Shock is brilliant and explains a lot of life in the US in the last fifty years. (Note in the US. I’m not sure about the rest of the world. And I could explain why, but it would sidetrack us a lot ...

Dangerous Tales

There are modes of failure for control of human society that most of us don’t think of. We don’t think of them because they’re rarely if ever shown in movies, and certainly not recently.

Let me explain: I’ve been cycling very fast between thinking swallowing the blackpill is a lack of information; and thinking the blackpilled aren’t blackpilled enough. And the sad thing? Both are right. It’s just which one I think is stronger that day.

Oh, I stand by “We’ll win this.” In fact we’ve al...

Trust

If I were to become incredibly rich — okay, this means winning the lottery — there would be an enormous temptation to leave my descendants a trust fund. And I probably would, but I’d make sure that there was something they must do before they got the money. What? I don’t know. Live independently and earn their own money for 10 years, maybe.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say they must amass a fortune before letting them inherit. I see the point of that, but my family is weird about...

Improving The World By David Bock

Improving The World By David Bock

A few years ago I read an article about an interaction that an experienced shooter had with a novice at the range. While I don’t know if this story is true in all details, it still contains an important lesson.

The experienced shooter, let’s call him Bob, noticed that the new shooter I’ll call Jane, had a lower priced, lower quality, firearm and was obviously nervous and inexperienced.

Instead of ignoring this person or dismissing them out of hand b...

Barbarism

Since I’m writing about a re-barbarized culture (yes, in the cursed book. Deal) I have been thinking a lot about barbarism and civilization.

The culture in the book is one that went into barbarism with a hammer, being the result of genetic and cultural manipulation, which robbed them even of the legacy of languages evolved on earth and made to serve mankind With the language, they lost the final tools to keep a high-level (or any level) of technology when the ship crashed and all adults b...

Sometimes a Meme is Just a Meme