DerekN

I recall being said that sociology is just anthropology in industrial societies, but that no one really knows what's the difference between the two, which may explain the antagonism. Durkheim and Weber were some of the better works. I didn't name those two because they were bad. I can't recall everything they wrote, and they wrote a lot, but it was Durkheim who said something like: because all societies have criminals, all criminals have essential functions in all societies, like reenforcing moral bounderies and creating unity, and he made similar errors, reminding me of the tribal premise, taking the whole as the standard. And Durkheim brings me to one of the mistakes I made in my questions. Durkheim wasn't working for the government, and his Suicide was of interest and groundbreaking. But doesn't the subject of a certain ideology, and not having any friends, leading to a higher suicide rate, belong to one of the other disciplines, like philosophy, history and psychology? Weber of course said that protestantism lead to capitalism, but he also said a lot of good stuff, but again, don't those subjects really belong to philosophy and history? I also studied some history at the university, and I could see the influence of Weber, like the ideal types of authority applied to medieval and renaissance Europe. What then makes sociology different? Looking at the whole, like social trends, forces and dominant ideas (the macro), and their impact on the individual (the micro), and vice versa, isn't exclusive to sociology. It also belongs to philosophy and history, only they use less quasi scientific lingo. I recall that sociologists say that philosophy is different from sociology because philosophy is abstract, while sociology deals with the real world, empirically. But of course philosophy deals with the real world (and apparently it's also an inductive science), even though most philosophies try not to. So isn't sociology just philosophy applied to the real world, only taking it too far with its positivism, and getting dominated by anti-reason philosophies?

I only did one year of sociology in 2005 so yes, I know far less than you do. This is a forum and I gave my opinion and the reasons for it, and anyone can explain to me why my reasoning is stupid. What I wrote was my impression of sociology, having had to read, among others, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mills, Luhmann, Babbie, Habermas, Baudrillard, and Rorty, and being taught methods like symbolic interactionism, the hypothetico-deductive scientific method, and grounded theory, all claimed to be equally usefull. I would honestly like answers to the following questions (but some may be unanswerable): - Why is sociology a legitimate discipline, seperate from the other disciplines? (And don't say, "it demystifies its subject matter and developes the sociological imagination to challenge myth making," which probably is the clearest answer I've ever gotten.) - What makes it different from philosophy or psychology? Don't they both study consciousness in relationship with the world, including other people and their ideas? - What does sociology study? Society? Social aggregates? Social interaction? The social structure? - And why? Why would one decide to look for a statistical, probabalistic relationship between income and infidelity, or globalization and divorce, or religion and knowledge about religion, or skinny cover models and teens' self-image? And who would make use of that knowledge besides the government? And who would pay for that besides taxpayers? - Isn't philosophy more fundamental, and isn't sociology based on all bad philosophies, following the philosophic trends from positivism to Marxism to pragmatism to postmodernism to environmentalism, never having had any contact with reality, and never having looked at the nature of man, the rational being?

I think sociology is bogus. It's a big disintegrated chaos of vague and contradicting theories and methods infected with postmodernism. The value it has is its connections with history, philopsophy, economics, anthropology, politics and psychology. It also just makes up reasons for the government to force and "nudge" people to do "the right thing" for "their own good," which is its purpose: finding and solving "social problems" and constructing the ideal society. Even if sociology has some legitimate ground, it first needs to be cleaned up because it's now thoroughly corrupted. Maybe it's helpfull for marketing and charitable organizations, but then they should call it something else.

Yes, it's positive. But I don't know if it's very significant. And if there was a free market in housing, there wouldn't be this huge shortage in Amsterdam. *** More significant is the new right-wing (sort of) coalition agreement. It has the motto, "Freedom and Responsibility." It may be a big step in the right direction. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11448088 (of course the media only cares about the burqa ban) I think they'll change very little. But the socialists, greens, labour parties and multiculturalists are pissed, so the coalition must have some positive things. And it appears 70% of the population thinks it's possitive, even though the leftists are screaming their usual objections (The poor become the victims, the rich are left unscathed! This will lead to Muslims being lead to the gaschambers! Women are forced back into the stone age because they won't be able to pay for daycare! This is killing the environment! etc.).

Basically, the idea is that the consciousness/self/soul has no identity, but at the same time it is who people really are at their core, and also it's a manifestation of the eternal. Then the ego is created around the soul because the soul is misguided and confused by the material world. A background story: Some time ago some dude called Plotinus taught that there was this "supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity or distinction; likewise it [was] beyond all categories of being and non-being." (Wikipedia). Then in the 20th century, some hippies started teaching that in the beginning there was this big giant consciousness called God, and everything was perfect and One, "containing no division, multiplicity or distinction." But then something horrible happened. Human beings started being born, and every time that happened, some little bit of that great big consciousness fell down to earth and ended up in a body, seperated from the rest, and these poor seperate souls forgot that they used to be One. When the bodies die, the soul then either returns to the great big consciousness, or it reincarnates. (All this is standard Platonism I think.) According to this doctrine, combined with some pseudopsychology, newborn babies are still pretty blissfull. They are still One with everything because they haven't created an ego yet. They don't know the difference between themselves and their environment; they think their needs are being met automatically. But then they they realize that they are seperate from their mother, that they have to do things to still their hunger, and that red blocks are different from green blocks. They create an ego around their soul/self to deal with the world. They have to think, to have a seperate identity, and to defend that identity from themselves and other ego's with more and more false beliefs. All these new responsibilities are absolute torture to the infant, because they seperate him from blissful Wholeness and Oneness with the Universe. And from that moment on man is doomed to spend his entire life trying to return to that perfect blissfull state of a newborn baby (and usually gets distracted by materialsim and meaningless sex, while all he has to do is meditate in a room and find people stupid enough to take care of him). So what these ideas essentially say is: (earthly) values are bad or just an illusion.

I haven't seen the work of Miles Mathis mentioned on this forum yet, so here I want to bring him to the attention of those who haven't heard of him, and to ask those who have what they think of his work. Miles Mathis writes papers about math and physics. He is intelligent, knowledgeable, arrogant, sometimes funny. I think you can say his work is objective: he doesn't indulge in mathematical fantasies. And he has a lot of good criticisms of modern, mainstream science and math. Here are some papers I like and that are relatively easy to understand: Calculus Simplified The Extinction of Pi String Theory: The Ineligant Universe Superposition Relativity Demistified Richard Feynman and the Glorification of Heuristics But there is a lot more stuff, most of which I don't really understand: http://milesmathis.com/updates.html

If all that mostly means: Let your subconscious do most of the work without putting unnecesary impediments on yourself, I agree. But that is mostly psychological, I think, and trying to integrate that with vague new age concepts could have bad effects, or at least create a lot of confusion. I do think you have to do "liniar thinking" for talking. I think you have to choose what you're going to talk about before your subconsious can pretty much take over, or if there is a specific outcome you want from the conversation, you should also keep that outcome in mind, to direct the subconscious. And then you'll also need access to a lot of previous, automatized knowledge and experience to have that good intution of knowing what to do and say; and you need to actually get in that mental state, which is hard. Personally I would say a lot of nerdy, dumb shit (which isn't bad per se). Soooo, I think that if you want to learn to properly use your mind for whatever reason, you should study the works of people who actually use it, and not to listen to some guru who's mental state is so horrible he wants to escape it, and who recyles a new age/pop psychology mix to disable the minds of his followers.

Tolle is just a lot of vague gibberish, which doesn't bother people who don't think, which is of course what Tolle advocates: not thinking. For Tolle, thinking is the source of all the pain and suffering in the world, and the ego, which is charachter, personality, values, etc., is an evil illusion which causes negative emotions. For Tolle, "going beyond the ego" means going beyond valueing, thinking and judging, which also means going beyond things like logic and identity. I think Tolle is evil. He's like Yoda telling Anakin not to value Padme so he won't care about her death (which I think makes him turn to the dark side). Being emotionally steady, having an appropriate emotional reaction, having confidence and self-esteem, are not the result of "going beyond the mind"; just the opposite. They're the result of good thinking. It is of course possible that someone is insecure, cares too much about his status or what his family thinks, has a trauma, a victim-mentality, whatever--something Tolle calls a "painbody"--but that should be solved by introspection, rational thinking and judging, and taking action to fix it--not by not thinking, not valueing, and being illogical. Now, chilling out is of course very important when chatting to a girl, but you don't have to go transcending your ego for that. I think you should know your own value by a rational standard (which includes your personal identity, your judgement about it, what you think you deserve, what kind of person you will spend your time wtih, not having an irrational standard for your performence...), and then talk to the girl. ... I got angry because now Ecky Tolle is mentioned in two threats. Tolle is my painbody.

Here's the first interview with the director,

Taxes take away the incentive to produce more because it reduces the benefit. Also, welfare reduces the incentive to work. Also, the government diverts capital and labour to unproductive or less productive projects. Also, less is reinvested into capital goods and labour, which leads to less capital and lower wages, which leads to a lower productivity of labour, working harder for less, and less being produced. Slaves produce a lot more than they consume, so slave-drivers stimulate the economy!

Fiat paper money can only be made by printing it. It's somewhat different when money is gold and silver. Then money gets created when it's mined and used for money. Thing is, gold and silver are also wealth when used in machines and stuff. ... When the new Ipod comes out, people who buy it save up and/or use their savings and/or don't by things they would normally buy ("older wealth" for example). It is not neccesary for everyone to increase their productivity. Under free competition, competitors enter the mp3-player market and companies who were already in that market see their profits drop. All the companies start producing their products with lower costs and selling them cheaper. So, to make a high profit again, they need to innovate, come up with something new, like an Ipod with Itunes. And later on new competitors come in again and they need to innovate again. The amount of money is totally independent of wealth. The amount and value of money can rise and fall in the same or opposite direction as the amount of wealth. When more wealth is created but the amount of money stays the same, the average wealth becomes cheaper in money terms. When more money is created but the amount of wealth stays the same, total wealth becomes more expensive.

There´s Powell´s book, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. And there's Higgs' paper: Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War.

What I meant to say more clearly is that I think it's a Marxist myth that the majority of the industry was owned by Jews and that they refused employment. I've heard the claim a couple of times before, but it doesn't sound believable, and I never found an argument to support it. I think it was just an excuse to take them out of the economic competition, and people still believe it. I also hear the claim about Jews today (once or twice), like it's a stereotype or something.

Racism: Jews are evil. Marxism: Capitalists are evil. ----------------------------------- + Nazism: Jews are evil capitalists. Also just found this:

Hi. The New Totalitarians is on scribd.com, here.

I found this book, The New Totalitarians by Roland Huntford (1980). The author says that the renaissance and the discovery of the indivudual were absent in Sweden; that a medieval serf mentality has always dominated there; that collectivism and submission to authority, the state and the group have become normal. That this is what it has in commmon with Russia. While European Renaissance writers wrote a lot about individuality etc., the Swedish didn't. There was no Swedish literature before the 18th century. I think that that has a lot to do with collectivism and egalitarianism being part of the language, and the absence of concepts that became popular during the Renaissace and the Enlightenment. (Apparently there were ideas in Sweden taken seriously (somewhere in the 1970s, I think), that come right out of Anthem, like actively handicapping the more intelligent children in class.)

Basically, the better companies and better ideas help you become a better man, and in the process become more attractive with better social skills. The community didn't always have that emphesis, and some still don't (like the NLP routine and scripted lines people), but it's the direction they've been going. They've noticed that being fake, even when having lots of sex, isn't that fulfilling, and that being fake and using tricks actually hinders being attractive and getting girls, at least in the long run. And everyone eventually learns that good looks isn't everything, and that high self-esteem girls are less psychotic, or less emotionaly exhausting, and thus nicer to be around. Field reports are helpful. They give different perspectives, tips, references, entertainment. They're a way to share experiences so that maybe someone else can learn from it, or can give you feedback. They should be used in the process of learning. If you have doubts, you should probably not do it. Some things you should be kept to yourself and don't belong on a forum. But it can be tempting to share your succes stories on a forum where everyone is in the same boat, trying to help eachother, sharing their own stories. I know there are still sources and gurus out there that teach robotic, linguistic, hypnotic, manipulative, Mystery crap, but that is so old school, and I think a lot of that should be avoided. It's all natural game now. But what should be kept in mind is that it's much easier to sell your product and become famous if you advertise with "Memorize the Secret Method to Nailing Tonnes of Chicks Immediatly!" than with "Learn How to Gradually and Eventually Become a More Authentic, Purpose-driven, Dominant, Positive Person With Great Social Skills and Who Can Make Women Very Very Happy." This shift has also lead to FR's and LR's being less about specific tactics or whatever, and more about mind-set, outlook on life, and charachter, and dealing with logistics and other specific problems. *** From a philosophical perspective, the community is full of subjetivism, pragmatism, and it keeps incorporating more and more vague, new age concepts, but that is the dominant trend in the entire self help industry. In that respect, the seduction community is better in that it focuses on taking action and working hard and long on yourself, instead of on meditating and being in the Now and taking beliefs on faith untill you've programmed yourself into a perceptual, nihilistic hippy wannabe who vibrates in a frequency that lets the Universe (or whatever capitalized Hegelian superorganism) know how it can cater to your whims. Unfortunately, these last ideas have been gaining ground in the community, even though some may be helpful when taking action. And guys who aren't interested in putting in hard effort quit pretty soon, don't progress, or never do anyting at all except buy products they hope will magically turn them into attractive men.

I can see that. But in a division-of-labor society, money is essential for buying things. Eventually you'll have to replace the tomatoes by buying seeds with money. The earth, the garden, a shovel, also need to be replaced and cost money. So, in this context, growing tomatoes, eating them and giving them away, is consumption. I think it's called either productive consumption or consumptive production. The things are use up.

What I thought: The goverment doesn't produce anything. Production has the purpose of earning money. When a business builds a factory, it does so to earn money. The government does not have this incentive. It just consumes by taking money from producers. The fact that that the government has to tax producers, or borrow or print money, proofs that the government just consumes. The things they build or the labor they employ is not self-sustaining. Without producers to tax, all that they physically "produce" eventually just dissapears, like a sandwich or a car or a windmill or a pyramid. What te government does may have some physical production as a consequence, but without the purpose of making money and replacing what is consumed, it's just consumption. The police is consumers' labor. They don't produce any goods and they aren't self-sustaining. They are productive from their own point of view (they earn money by working), but you should look at it from the employers perspective. A guard or bouncer in the service of a business, for example, is producers' labor. Soldier, consumption. Secretary employed by business, production; secretary employed by government, consumption.

I liked pavlina's work and the people who were attracted to it. But then Steve started talking to crickets to shut up (and they listened), getting his dead friends ghost to help him win at the black jack table, and apparently animal spirit guides can tell te future, or whatever. So I'm no longer following his work. I'm not a fan of the direction he's going and the people he's attracting now.