Holiness Escalation
Remember this? The lily-white couple who implanted 100% black embryo and gave birth to black triplets? They were so happy of themselves. So proud of it. The holiest people on earth. Surely nobody could be holier than us!
Oh boy. There's a Japanese saying, 上には上がある (ue ni wa ue ga aru). It means that as high as you get, there's always somewhere higher. As good as you think you are, there's always someone better. The world's a big place. And humans can be so annoying.
Another white American Evangelical couple are on the news. They have a black adopted child, but that's obviously old fashion, don't get points for that. So they had to do something. Now they have adopted a baby with no brain. That's right. No brain. And they made a video about it! Take that. The black embryo-couple only had some boring picture of themselves holding three babies. But we have a video. On Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN-1O\_nVZzY
Besides, the black implanted babies have brains. How 2015 is that? You don't go to heaven by adopting babies with brains. That's just like, racist. Are you IQ-worshippers or something? Why do you need a brain for? We have faith. It takes real faith is to raise a brainless child. Don't need a brain if you have the Grace of God.
Here's counting until someone makes a video about adopting a black brainless kid. And after that, someone implanting an already defective embryo knowing that it would develop no brain. And eventually, the inevitable woman who actively provokes a disability in her baby, perhaps through heavy drinking.
In Brave New World, Huxley wrote of a future where different castes of human are deliberately manufactured by dumbing down developing fetuses with alcohol, so as to make them obedient workers and sustain the easy life of the alphas. We still don't have artificial wombs, but with a little bit of luck we might be able to outsource the problem to actual people! Now that's a Brave New World.
Seriously now, I shouldn't be snarking at some of the few white people who actually bother making white babies. And they didn't actually go seek a completely unviable baby, they were told at the last moment, and given their social standing they couldn't just renege on the deal. I think making a schmaltzy video signaling the joys of brainlessness is pretty fucked up, but perhaps it was some overzealous women at church that came up with the idea and talked them into it, and again they couldn't just refuse. The guy has that look in his face, the look of a man who is constantly out-talked by his wife and the old hags at church and is actually pretty pissed about it, but what can you do.
Still, the whole thing is a fairly good reflection of the twisted values of our society. File this under "we might not like the new era of religion".
13 comments
"The guy has that look in his face, the look of a man who is constantly out-talked by his wife and the old hags at church and is actually pretty pissed about it, but what can you do." Get a stick. If you're worried she'll tell the police that you've gotten a stick, get a bigger stick. Escalation, they understand.
[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]
I'm continuously shocked at how -- for lack of a better word -- cucked these guys let themselves get. The wife and church ladies are, without a doubt, very much into the holiness signalling game. But does this man have no friends to tell him he shouldn't be letting his wife talk him into adopting a totally unrelated brainless baby? And then after that, adopting another baby that literally has no brain?
Ye Gads, It's a Holiness Arms Race! I understand that this is a human psychological thing. But I can't help wonder, "Is there something in Judaic religions that exacerbates this effect?" I know Judaism has this. Does Islam have this sort of Holiness signaling thing as well?
I'd say blowing yourself up for some pretty minor military operation is pretty high up in the holiness scale. More than adopting a black baby. On the other hand, given the choice... it's hard. But I'm not a very holy person. Isn't bathing in the Ganges a fairly gross thing to do, which people only do to feel holy? Ditto for those sadhu out there, or those guys who walk over needle carpets and all that stuff. I can imagine that starting as some little game, then starting a bragging arms race until you had to pierce your mouth with a thick iron pole if you wanted to look cool.
Hmmm! Let's see if I can address your points 1. In general the Western idiots who signal holiness hope to receive the admiration of their peers and maybe also a bit of power. But you need to be alive to enjoy those. And western holy men never risk even a scratch in their signaling. An implicit understanding here is that the holy man does not really believe in the progressive religion fully himself. He is part believer, part a opportunist, gaining holy points without risking much. In a way, a progressive Holy man is holier than he is an idiot. 2. When an Islamic jiahdi blows himself up, he will not be around to to enjoy the virtue he just signalled. He is actually stupider than he is holy. So I can't classify him as a holy man. 3. Now the Hindu masses dipping in dirty waters. I think it is more tradition than holiness signalling. For signaling to be effective, the signalers must be few. What sort of signalling is it when entire masses do it? At that point you look cool and hip if you don't do it. 4. Now let's get to the Hindu religious mendicants who do weird stuff like stand on one knee. I think you hit the jackpot with this one. Yes, this does look a lot like signalling. Massive social status for a little bit of pain. I think Gandhi, the father of the post-colonial India was the greatest holiness signaler ever. He got to sleep with Teenage girls as a bald, old, ugly, halitosis affected, geriatric. How is that for Holiness signalling eh? Can any western holi-signaler match this? Did Jesus ever sleep wit teenage virgins even in his late twenties? I don't think so! Gandhi the Fakir is how it is done. Now that's what I call signaling! That's how it's done, baby! Not an idiot who blows himself up and not being around to enjoy the adulation.
Scott Atran documented the process very well. Muslim kids which are bored with their lives go to the mosque, make new friends, meet an Al Qaeda or similar operative, and they start bonding with these friends over a islamist signaling arms race. So they all start bragging about how edgy they are, how much they love Muhammad and the ghazis, how much they wanna kill all those kuffars. Then they start planning an attack, at first joking, but next thing you know the professional terrorist has talked you into promising a suicide bombing. Which is cool, because suicide bombing is super holy. Points for me! Oh wait. But once you've done that, you can't go back. If you fail to blow yourself up, you've betrayed your signaling. You will lose your friends, your family, everything you hold dear. All your social standing will go to hell. Given this outcome, dying is actually the better option! Suicidal people are those who suffer, or predict they will suffer a sudden drop in social status. A man whose company goes bankrupt, or who goes in debt, and kills himself before telling his wife and kids. The jihadis aren't that different. Only dumber. It's more common than we think. Look at this https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/jihadis-are-amateurs-or-ethnocentrism-done-right/ Gandhi indeed was a genius. Completely hacked the British public opinion by signaling exactly right. He made it so that fancy housewives in London all liked to signal how much they loved Gandhi, so peaceful and whatever, and any objective criticism of Gandhi would be seen as personal attack on the honor of upper class British ladies.
You know, Gandhi is quite a controversial Figure in India today, not unlike Chairman Mao in China. Perhaps you should do a post about how the Chinese see the great Chairman along with your post about the Taiping Rebellion when you get the time. But I digress. Gandhi might have been a Genius. It is hard to disagree with you there. He understood the Brits very well. And he undermined them by hitting them at what they thought was their strong point (i.e. bringing civilization to the Indians). He did this by manipulating British opinion about themselves and also world opinion (chiefly American) about the Brits. Well played. But there is another school of thought in India which says that the Brits did not see Gandhi as a threat at all. When he was jailed, he always stayed in Birla mansion in great comfort with evening walks and all that. Where-as the revolutionaries (even peaceful ones) whom the Brits really feared were hounded out of India (AuroBindo Ghosh) or tortured in Jail (Savarkar) or killed outright (Lajpat Rai). This school of thought further claims that the Brits used Gandhi as a medium to drain out the revolutionary fervor of the Indian masses and channel it under the leadership of a senile, bald, frail old, Harmless, Fool suffering from a permanent case of halitosis. This school of thought further concludes that the real reason for the British Withdrawal from India was that the Brits had lost confidence in the British-Indian Army after a large number of them just surrendered in Singapore to the Japanese and then joined the Japanese Army in an invasion of India. Then there was the naval mutiny of 1946 that convinced the Brits that their situation was precarious. Being smarter than the French in Vietnam, they just left before things got nasty. The credit for Indian independence is then taken from Gandhi and given to a combination of factors including the world war 2, geopolitical realities and the fact that the Indian soldiers of the British Indian army were no longer reliable. There is a lot of revisionism going on in Indian history these days. Sure signs of a change of Guard.
That makes a lot of sense. The Brits indeed took a lot of care that colonial independence was all peaceful and orderly, so to avoid the impression they were being kicked out by force. I guess Gandhi's talent lay in his being able to position himself as the favorite activist of the British establishment. Which is no mean feat, being the skinny ugly troll he was. Nehru at least was handsome and classy.
And having disagreed earlier, I now agree with your point about Suicide bombing being an instance of holiness signaling. Yes, I can see how it will start as bragging about what a devout muslim you are and you keep upping the stakes till you declare yourself a suicide bomber. You've thought this one through very well. I did not look at this from your angle. Well done, mate!
How will the alt-right itself fall into holiness signaling?
Oh, it did long ago. That why Anti-Semitism always springs up.
Also via the "purity of economic theory" leading to endless splintering over "what should be done" Are you Austrian or Georgian or Single Tax or Flat Tax or whatever. Hey, you've compromised here!! You Statist!