Damian M. Schloming ideas and information

Naomi Wolf on rape: "...ours is increasingly an age of geopolitics by blackmail."

This website is to allow me to present intelligibly my thoughts and insights on various social, political, historical and even scientific issues I've been studying in the past two years. 

Some of which I have background knowledge of due to having been involved with and interested in various political movements many years ago. 

My political viewpoint leans towards libertarian, except that I am not completely happy with the way some of them think. Libertarians want limited government and civil liberties. As a matter of principle, that is excellent. But then libertarians seem to suffer from this ingrained bias of Western Culture that you can somehow intellectually decide that government "should be" a certain way and then the perfect society can then be achieved by some legislative body sitting down and crafting some written rule decreeing that that is how society is to be from now on.

 

Actually, I think government and the larger society it is embedded in is more like some kind of living beast that you can train or that can morph in one direction or another, but it can't be so easily manipulated or changed as we think. Written rules don't have the exact effect they literally intend, but instead enforcement of the rules and all sorts of other considerations regarding government bureaucracies results in all sorts of ripple effects or unintended consequences. As a result, the most free society does not necessarily result from the one with the nicest and most free sounding written constitution or constitutional rights guaranteeing liberty. A very good example of this issue is the liberal Warren Court expanding all sorts of fifth amendment procedural and technical criminal protections for defendants. Liberals saying they want to do this might be arguing this is to help the poor. The opposite is the truth. This is to help defense attorneys, and why is that a bad thing? Because criminal procedures and technicalities of the liberal Warren Court only resulted in defendants having protection IF they could hire an expensive enough attorney to do a good enough job PRESSING them. Public defenders are part of the corrupt court system, they deliberately do a bad job so as to make sure well heeled defendants find it worth their while to pay extra. Huge sentences ALSO give well heeled defendants more incentive to pay extra. Thus, defense attorneys representing rich criminal defendants have a vested interest in maintaining the strict sentencing policies responsible for Mass Incarceration. Furthermore, there was a law school bubble which burst, and now law schools are doing poorly because lawyers are not finding it worth their while to spend so much money on a law degree. Fact of the matter is, those liberal Warren Court protections indirectly increased legal fees for defense attorneys, thereby contributing to the upward pressure on college tuition and law school tuition, simply because the amount of money attorneys could make from a law degree made it more worthwhile. 

It also is true that the regulatory state increased in many other ways, increasing demand for attorneys in other spheres besides the criminal justice system. But I am going to talk about the criminal justice system here for now to use it as an example.

This is just one example showing how a policy that, examined in the most superficial way you think it's designed to help criminal defendants overall in the long run has the exact opposite effect. Because these protections are ones that only can be accessed by those with the money to pay for top dollar attorneys. And, it isn't always necessarily related to the facts of the case. The attorney usually has an incestuous relationship with everyone else in the court system, so much so that basically if you pay the right attorney enough money, you will get off because he is friends with all the judges and prosecutors, and parole officers, etc.

And for me to say that could lead to others thinking it is rather awful to have a court system so incestuously corrupt. Except, these are all nice people who know each other and court systems have ALWAYS been like this, more or less. And they always will be this way. Government is incapable of being perfect. Understanding its inherent imperfections such as this are necessary when it comes to avoiding passing laws which interact with such a culture in a way to produce very bad outcomes.

 

After all, we have always had government and, for some reason, it would appear if we always have had it, that is because we need it. The inner workings of government are so awful, you discover after you observe it, it can easily lead many to think we should just abolish it. But, given that that is impossible, the best alternative is to understand it as inherently flawed, and realistically think of how to make things "the least bad."

This is what I have thought for a long time, yet only recently have I stumbled across some law professors who subscribe to a movement called "legal realism." It turns out they think exactly the way I do, and see the same flaws in our society (or in the thinking of popular culture which leads to wrong-headed policies in our legal system) that I see.

Oddly enough, they seem to describe themselves as leftists yet they are not the kind of ordinary mainstream leftist most people would understand to be "of the left." Which is strange because I never would have thought of myself as a liberal -- but not a conservative either. But maybe this is because of certain strands of liberalism I have been exposed to which are quite awful. 

In any case, why categorize oneself? As I study and learn more about society, I like to share various insights and not limit myself to any one "box" or "category" that I pigeonhole myself into.

More on group selection by men of other men

April 14, 2014  /  Damian Schloming

And how it plays out.

First of all, I'm going to state what I was thinking awhile ago when i started thinking of this topic earlier. Namely, let's start out by saying human beings engage in kin selection -- and multi-level group selection is just a version of that. Why? Because, at some point, go back enough generations, and we are all relatives. In which case, selection means favoring a group closer to us over a group farther away from us genetically -- based on percentage of genetic material shared.

And, that's the thing. If evolutionary biologists insist that I, as a human being, want to maximize my genes, it also holds true I have an interest in maximizing the reproduction of those who share a significant amount of my genetic material in common with me, meaning relatives. However, in doing so, I want my genetic material to combine with superior genetic material that is COMPATIBLE and COMPLEMENTARY to it -- even if totally unrelated. Thus, my interest in spreading my genetic material results in an interest in encouraging the reproduction of other genetic material I merely decide is "good." Even if not "familiar" or "same" as mine. 

Furthermore, I do think in today's super individualistic culture, most evolutionary biologists exaggerate human tendency to compete -- which DOES happen in the face of scarce resources but, otherwise, there is no reason not to support the reproduction of others unrelated to you UNLESS overpopulation and scarcity means a need to figure out WHO is going to die or leave and who is going to stay. 

Otherwise, we have an interest in maximizing the population and supporting everyone's reproduction, to better ensure our own survival since we can all breed with one another and that's precisely what our descendants are going to do. We do, however, have an interest in ensuring those with the best survival characteristics breed in higher rates than those who are inferior, and favoring those who are superior over those who are inferior. Since, after all, many generations ahead, those who are superior will eventually mix their genes with our genes, even if we are among an inferior class.

This interest, however, gets moderated by one thing. Only my senses -- sense of eyesight, hearing, memory, etc., help me determine who is genetically superior material whose reproduction I want to favor, in the interests of ensuring my progeny breed with GOOD breeding material rather than POOR breeding material. 

I use the word "memory" for a specific reason. Namely, before I discussed men's inherent tendency to cooperate, but what does cooperation mean? Cooperate means pushing genetically superior men to the top of the hierarchy. But, you can't do that without having objective measures to determine who is superior and who isn't. That might explain a great deal of violence between men -- much of which is in good humor. It's a testing mechanism. Sports are a testing mechanism too. All sorts of competition men engage in are testing mechanisms, to figure out which men are the best -- and they end up at the top and reproduce the most. 

I am just saying this in order to point out that much of what we call "competition" can actually be seen as a form of cooperation or of altruism. We just don't see it that way because we disapprove of it -- irrationally so. So, when two men get into a fight, the fact is that everyone notices who won, and it has an impact on his social standing later on, or it could. Sometimes it helps both of them in different ways. It's not inherently competitive if both survive. Only when some get killed can we call it competition.

In any case, the reason why I am talking about kin selection versus group selection and bringing in the term "measurement" is, let's say human beings are trying to engage in kin selection. At some point, our senses give us only a blurry ability to distinguish kin from non-kin, and its pointless. It becomes better simply to distinguish who is a better mate for a female version of you, if it is a man you are judging. Our senses are more attuned to distinguishing THAT than attuned to distinguishing whether someone is related to us.

Though, if any senses out there are able to determine kin more than others, it is our sense of smell. Which, guess what, women have a better sense of than men do. And, if there are any senses out there that better enable us to engage in very good GROUP selection, it is our sense of EYESIGHT -- which MEN have a better sense of than women. At least men have a better geometrical visual sense. Which is extremely important, when it comes to the ability to size up other people. 

Among certain animals, it is impossible to get a mother to accept a baby that is unrelated to her, because she can SMELL that the baby is foreign and she will not take care of it. And you cannot make her -- kin selection is a very instinctual "on off" switch. Irrational, in some ways. The mother whose loyalty for her child will never be compromised no matter what -- try to explain to her the child is bad and doesn't deserve it, you won't get anywhere. Similarly, there is a stereotype out there which I think is valid that female friendships tend to be defined by blind loyalty. Among certain female peer groups, queen bees develop totalitarian reign, and any outsider the queen bee has any kind of problem with is deemed automatically wrong, regardless of individual behavior or objective reality. It matters only WHO someone is and NOT their behavior. 

This is a social behavior pattern that shows up among those who practice KIN SELECTION and not GROUP SELECTION. Whereas, among men, there is a bit more of a meritocratic process to determine who is right, who is wrong, who has a right to have a problem with someone else, etc. They will decide to side with outsiders who are meritocratically correct, even if not part of the "in crowd." That's group selection. Not kin selection. They will BRING outsiders INTO the group who they decide are cool or in some way have characteristics they feel are superior and admirable in some way -- according to certain objective or semi-objective measures. Again -- group selection.

So, already, the distinction between whether we engage in group selection or kin selection are moderated by what SENSES we use to JUDGE who to "select for" or "favor" and who not to. Eyesight = group selection. Scent = kin selection. The part of our brain "trying to" engage in kin selection will, when it filters that "kin selection" instinct through our sense of eyesight, inevitably transform it into group selection simply through inability to measure anything better than that through eyesight.

This is in line with quantum mechanics theory in physics which holds that your ability to figure out a particle's exact velocity and position is marred by "blurry" measuring tools. Thus, strict "kin selection" is going to be blurred by one's inability to fully distinguish kin versus non-kin. Or, if kin selection is one where you are supposed to favor others in proportion to what percentage of DNA you share in common with them -- the limitation of your senses will make you only able to select for certain markers which raise only the PROBABILITY that the person you favored shared more genes with you than someone else. 

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