Author: Britton William Frost

Writegenstein #1: Does this look right to you?

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We do not typically think of Wittgenstein as an aesthetic philosopher, but he was. So much of his writing, regardless of the perceived topic, was not strictly about the topic we attribute to it. It was most fundamentally about intuition.

“Does this look right to you?” (Lectures on Aesthetics, 1.)

Things of an aesthetic nature (art, music, wine, etc.) are things whose objective critiques — insofar as those can be made — are founded in intuition. Sometimes that intuition is shared among a group, and sometimes it is not. Nevertheless, we often criticize the validity of the critique itself as often as we criticize the aesthetic object.

Funnily, we seem to reserve “critique of critique” for the greatest thinkers and artists, at least before they’re dead and gone. Wittgenstein himself is no exception. Ironically, it is establishment critique that is most worthy of such criticism but least often receives it, e.g. mainstream journalism that simply parrots whatever cherry-picked information will most easily push along their political agenda.

Critique of what is good and true, however, is an endeavor that is too far removed from the very art, music, or idea in question. This is an act of ego, fueled by preconditioned hate, based on a willful misunderstanding of the object. That ego encompasses one’s identity. That which one hates, one in fact cares about deeply, and that about which one deeply cares, one is.

Wittgenstein wrote on every topic of philosophy, but when you read him closely, it is clear that he was always writing with one intention: to conceptualize ‘the person’. What we are cannot be sufficiently described on material grounds. Our perception sets us apart from other beings as as it does from one another.

What it looks like to me — taking ourselves as aesthetic objects worthy of critique — is that we are things that care about things. Ironically, the less you care about something, the more clearly you will be able to conceptualize it. This is the job of the philosopher. This is why Wittgenstein, not limiting his work to one topic or another but focusing on how to conceptualize each part as an aspect of the grander reality of the human condition, should be regarded as a pure philosopher — one who is indifferent to the outcome as long as that outcome is true.

Opinion: Joe Rogan, a Renaissance man

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By Britton Frost / Guest Columnist
Edited by Mike Gorman
 

Like most millennials, I remember the early 2000s when Joe Rogan was just that drill sergeant who hosted “Fear Factor,” but it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool and well-rounded dude. Was he just playing a character back then, or was he actually that guy that we loved to hate?

His reputation is different now. He’s a man’s man, a talented TV and UFC presenter and a former national champion martial artist himself. He enjoys hunting wild game and running through the Hollywood Hills with his insta-famous dog. He likes cars, music and unfiltered conversations about everything from science to sex. He has an open, refreshing sense of humor and is one of the most popular comedians of our day. If I were pressed to choose one individual as our Renaissance man, I’d look no further. The fact that Joe has accomplished so much is impressive, but there is another purpose he serves which might top it all: his podcast called the “Joe Rogan Experience.”

Podcasting is kind of a new thing. Just as emojis and memes allow us to express thoughts and emotions more simply than through text alone, podcasting is a platform for learning that is less limiting than reading a book or sitting through a lecture. The latter two involve someone “talking at” you, leaving you with the feeling that you must agree or disagree with the whole message or with the person.

Although podcasting is new, it is ancient in essence. Podcasts, in the form that Joe’s takes, are closely in line with forum-style discussion used by philosophers in ancient Greece. The long format has no time limit, and the goal of each conversation is to understand as many sides of the topic as possible and to make clear the terms with which that is being done, all with a healthy dose of humor. Joe converses from near-universal appeal given the broad spectrum of his interests, not in a manner that is too intellectual or pretentious. He stops his guests and plays devil’s advocate when he senses that the audience might be getting lost. His curiosity is sincere and child-like. He asks “why,” is a good rhetorician and doesn’t shy away from debate when his guest seems rigid or incomplete in a position. But because he is so open and versatile, it rarely comes to debate.

This is precisely what education was all about in Greek times, and which we’ve strode far from in recent centuries: thinking, discussing, arguing, structuring, understanding and learning from ideological conflict. That has been lost, however, and now the academy is saturated by pretentious book-readers who stay locked in their ivory towers, closed off from all but those who share their path and their unchallenged, institutionally dogmatic opinions. Readership of academic journals is confined to those who are actively participating in the research. It has no popular appeal and little impact on the world. The university, from a humanities standpoint, is worthless.

In Greece, philosophy and critical thinking were the core of learning, and things anyone could participate in. Joe is a player in the resurgence of that ancient game. He has had guests such as fellow comedians, physicists, academics, journalists, celebrities, nutritionists and provocateurs of all sorts. He has produced more than 1,200 episodes. If there aren’t a few that you find interesting, then it’s likely you have no interests.

Having begun 10 years ago as a comedy show from his living room, Joe’s is by far the most listened-to in the world. His subscriber base and monthly downloads are in the tens of millions and are growing. But why? The episodes typically range from one to four hours. Who has time for that? The answer is: anyone. First of all, it’s easy. You don’t have to physically be anywhere. You can listen on your own time while you perform mundane tasks. Having a good podcast can even motivate you to get those dreaded things done. Podcasts essentially sell time, but there is something much bigger going on that Joe does best. It is the search for truth, in the philosophical sense, and it is essential.

We live in the best time to live, in the most liberated country that has every been dreamed of. Quality of life for my great grandparents would be considered poverty today in almost every way. We now have access to luxuries beyond our ancestors’ wildest dreams. Yet we are ungrateful. We are divided by opinion and seek confirmation of our beliefs by filtering our Twitter and Instagram feeds to see only those things that offer us expedient pleasure, without having to challenge ourselves in the ruthlessly competitive jungle formerly known as the real world. But, challenge ourselves we should, to question confirmations of what we think we already know. Challenge ourselves to expand our knowledge while we go for a jog or do the dishes. Learning is a form of growing, and one cannot grow without shedding layers of stubborn deadwood from our ripe, malleable cores. Challenge ourselves by seeking truth, through podcasting, as philosophers do – philosophers like Joe Rogan.

Posted Apr 5, 2019 at 7:14 AM, Houma Courier & Thibodaux Daily Comet

Opinion: The difference between empathy and compassion

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By Britton Frost / Guest Columnist
Edited by Mike Gorman
To lack compassion is seen by many today, especially in political debates, as a humanistic fallacy. Compassion is portrayed by lefties in the social justice fight as the highest virtue, and to be rational and factual is “triggering.” As a fairly rational and factual person, I would understand this better if “compassion” weren’t so often interchanged with “empathy.” It is typically empathetic people, unlike myself, who make a deal of this. Today I want to explore the difference between empathy and compassion and how can we define compassion so that it is something worth striving for.

Empathy is more straightforward. We ca define it as the ability to understand someone’s experience by sharing their feelings. One can have an empathetic understanding of parental love of a child only by having a child and loving it. Others can only sympathize with that feeling – to understand that parental love is somehow deeper and more unconditional than other types of love, for example, by relating it what one feels for one’s dog (which is not a child, by the way). Apart from life-changing experiences such as having a child, however, there isn’t much one can do to learn to empathize – to feel what another is feeling. It seems to be an ability that one has to a fixed degree from birth. Many psychologists agree.

Since the 1980s, psychologists have used the Big 5 model to measure and understand personality traits in a consistent way. The acronym for the traits is OCEAN (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism). Once measured, the results are understood in percentiles, and the distribution among the data pool is represented by a bell curve where most people center around the average. These traits show that everyone’s personality is unique. They explain the ways in which my biological brother and I are so different despite our having been born less than two years apart with identical upbringings. They strongly indicate that one’s personality is more nature than nurture, it is thought, by about an 80-20 ratio.

The trait relevant to these purposes is agreeableness. This is the maternal aspect of personality that measures rates of aggression on the low percentile end and empathy on the high end. The average woman is over 20 percent higher than the average man in agreeableness. This trait difference explains why women are more likely to choose people-based professions such as health care and social work, why they are more suited (apart from obvious biological reasons) to care for infants and why there are 10 times fewer of them in prison. Men tend to be more thing- and system-oriented, dominating fields like engineering, economics and serial killing. In short, agreeableness measures one’s innate propensity to empathize, and that is a people-oriented matter. This trait cannot be changed throughout life – only managed. If we assume that compassion is a moral virtue, and if empathy and compassion are the same, then there is plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that women are better people than men are. Of course, this is absurd.

If compassion is a virtue, as I think it is, we cannot equate it with empathy. No one is a better or worse person than anyone else simply because one is born with a particular temperament. A woman hears an infant crying and thinks, “What can I do to care for and nurture it?” A man in the same situation thinks, “How do I stop the crying?” Though the woman acts from empathy and the male more systematically, they can achieve the same positive result of giving the child what it needs.

Politically, to be more empathetic is to say that one sees the victimized and underprivileged as exploited infants. The resurgence of coddling, socialist political ideals in the west have been described as a “feminine philosophy” that is somehow preferable to the competitive, masculine capitalism that has brought the entire western world out of crippling poverty. Even masculinity itself has been described by supporters of this neo-socialism as “toxic.” It is assumed that maternal empathy is more virtuous than masculine rationale despite all of the 20th century history of communism and current socialist disasters such as in Venezuela. They mask these ideals as compassionate, but that is fake. Compassion, as I define it, must involve the feminine and the masculine.

Empathy is founded mostly in one’s biology, so it indicates how one reacts. It must, therefore, be tempered. Compassion is exemplified by how one willfully acts, so it must be cultivated. Men often have to work hard to act with care and gentleness. Having a daughter is one way a man can be forced into to achieving this. Imagine if Donald Trump did not have a daughter; he might have become an actual tyrant. Women have to learn to recognize contexts where empathy is not appropriate, so they can hold back from acting on it – such as in not sheltering their children into dependency and resisting the urge to vote Democrat. Cultivating compassion must come from both ends. There is a time and place for both maternal and paternal interference in society as well as in the family. Too much or too little of either can be fatal. Real compassion is the ability to find the right balance between the two.

Posted Mar 26, 2019 at 7:00 AM, Houma Courier & Thibodaux Daily Comet

Opinion: Why your kid is smarter than you

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By Britton Frost / Guest Columnist
Edited by Mike Gorman
 

Teaching logic has shown me that everyone is born with some capacity for critical thinking, but most people lose the skill over time. Children, specifically those aged 3-5, happen to be the best at it. This can be proven by a single, dreaded word: “Why?”

When someone asks a why question, they are asking a question of reason, which is to say they are thinking critically to some degree. Children do this much more openly than adults, which is why most adults think children are simply being pests when they do. They’re not. The root of their questioning is different. It is not aimed toward a predetermined goal. It is not funneled through other knowledge accumulated over time. It is genuine curiosity, it is philosophical. Children challenge assumptions, premises and claims more openly than anyone, and they demand reasons to back up new knowledge. Their brains are not computers that simply accept input data. They are inclined to put effort into developing beliefs, and they should. Unfortunately, many parents and teachers are not ready to cater to such relentless curiosity, nor do they want to. Who can blame them? Thinking is calorie-intensive and requires effort. This neglect, I think, is a critical mistake. Parents and teachers have a tremendous job to do.

A child’s tendency to ask why will persist for some time, but his or her continuance to do so will depend greatly on how open and able his or her parents and teachers are to dealing with it. In a perfect world, adults would take this as an opportunity to think critically about those questions themselves when they likely had not done so before. Instead, they get frustrated or annoyed, react with an answer such as “because I said so,” and send their kid straight to bed or wherever to keep them out from under the their skin. This is an uninspired and resistant approach to educating. The child’s curiosity is repressed, and they gradually stop asking questions and start submitting more and more to whichever ideology they find immediately pleasing to their temperament. The more conscientious children by nature (who are no smarter, despite what convention might suggest) give in more quickly to the rules set before them. Others become rebellious. Either way, their guardians’ attitudes have lasting, negative effects on how they think.

I do not have any children of my own. On that basis, one might think that I have an incredible opinion on the matter. I would like to think that the contrary is true for two main reasons. First, I am a good planner. I am fully aware of the challenges of raising a child and thus take the necessary precautions to prevent having one before I’m ready. Secondly, experience isn’t everything. I can observe the effects of bad parenting because my thoughts about the matter are not distorted by the shifting perspective caused by having a child – a perspective that centers one’s concerns around the child, inhibiting one’s ability to reason outside of the scope of the child’s perceived well-being.

Having said that, this is my quick and dirty “philosophy of learning” that is critical for parents and educators, though often painfully difficult to implement.

There is a modern saying that goes, “grade school teaches one what to think whereas college teaches one how to think.”

Unfortunately, by the time we get to college age, we have already developed a foundation for our system of beliefs. It is almost too late to teach one how to think. What’s more, universities since 2014 – humanities and social sciences in particular – have become politically correct indoctrination machines designed specifically to prevent critical thinking. Critical thinking should start much sooner, well before one considers entering that battleground. Small children ask the most critical questions. Parents should help them improve that ability at that point. The obstacle here is that the parents have previously adopted certain beliefs and have largely surrendered their own ability to think well, much less will they be able to teach that skill to someone else. Leading by example is vital, though, as kids learn largely by copying. If they learn to suppress their intellect – their interest in ideas – at a young age, there is a good chance that you won’t like how they turn out. There’s nothing worse than that (so I’ve heard).

How can someone be ready to raise or teach a child in this manner?

This seems like a personal question that everyone has a unique answer to. That is true to an extent, but there is also an ideal that all should embrace. What readiness should mean here, in my view, is that one is willing to accept the intellectual challenge of teaching a little person how to think, and this involves letting go of certain beliefs of your own. Don’t shrug or shirk every time your child asks “why,” but ask it for yourself, and develop genuine interest for your child’s questions and ideas, no matter how absurd they may seem. Do a quick Internet search of the facts, reason through the answer together, and you’ll both learn something about the topic, about each other and most crucially about yourselves. The best part? It’s free!

Posted Jan 31, 2019 at 1:00 AM, Houma Courier & Thibodaux Daily Comet

Opinion: Why you have to trust Generation Y

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By Britton Frost / Guest Columnist

Edited by Mike Gorman

Hi there. My name is Generation Y. I was born between 1980-94. If you are of the traditionalist or baby-boomer generations, I expect that you are a bit worried about my place in the world today. I like alternative rock music, thrift stores and video games. I’m on anti-depressants, and I am still in debt from being unable to monetize my liberal arts degree that I earned almost a decade ago. I rent a room in a three bedroom apartment and have virtually no chance of purchasing a home in the foreseeable future as two salaries are required for that, while my salary – due to the inflation that you caused – barely qualifies as one.

It’s fair to say that I’m a bit of a mess. I like to think, however, that I am an organized mess.

Why am I such a mess? This is largely a matter of perception, for we have different values. You value hard work while I value passion. You value family while I value personal freedom. You value tradition while I value new ideas. We couldn’t seem more different on the surface, and therefore, as the moment creeps nearer, you are extremely hesitant to hand down the torch of society to me. All of your feelings are completely justified, and even I can admit that much of what you do works. You’re right about a lot. I am here to convince you that things will work out just fine despite out differences. I may have led you to believe otherwise because I’ve asked of your values “why?” Hence my name, but that very question is what will keep society afloat for the next few decades. Allow me to explain.

First, I’m trying my best to live a life that is meaningful and unique, and, without discrediting your values, I question whether your path should become mine. I see the world as a place of possibilities rather than inevitabilities, and the difference in our values not as “mine-not-yours” but rather as “mine-then-yours.” Don’t worry, you’ll get your grandchildren – just fewer of them and later than you’d like. I want it all, and I think I can have it. I’m a dreamer, but I am also aware of the utility and importance of your values. It is taking me a while, however, to find balance between them. This balance is necessary, as the next point will show.

Secondly, the world is changing quickly, and my logic suits it. Technology is evolving at a much faster rate than our brains can, and however unfortunate, this is having a harder impact on my future everyday. I often praise it, for it allows me to entertain myself and work freelance from home in my pajamas while I order food to be delivered right to my door. You see that as a threat to the value of hard work, and that is often correct, but what constitutes work in the first place is changing. I’m doing my best to adapt to this shift to an extent that you don’t need to.

Thirdly, my conditioning, due in part to your well-intentioned attempt to protect me, has led me into the forest without a flashlight. As a child, I was often rewarded for participating incompetently. I left a box in your attic full of green ribbons to prove it. You knew that wasn’t true, so you reassured me that in the case that I could not make things work on my own, you would pick up the slack. I’m grateful for that, sincerely, as it has given me short-term security, but you have overcompensated for my delayed success; I still have to take responsibility for my long-term ends. I am having to cut myself off since you didn’t have the heart to do it when I was 22. I’m sorting through the mess, finally, and I’m even teaching myself to cook out of necessity just to save money – a skill I could have learned from you.

We’re different, yes, but we’re also the same. I didn’t grow up like my little cousins in Generation Z are doing right now, having had an iPhone from age 12 and forming personal identities through others’ verification on social media. I’m only minimally influenced by it. Gen-Z, however, is a lost cause in that regard. They are lazy, have no practical skills, use GPS on their phones to get to the vape shop and will gladly pay $9 for avocado toast at the Internet cafe on the corner. They have no sympathy for tradition nor understanding of the depth of your values. They’re too far removed from them. Who is parenting them anyway? Oh yeah, Generation X. Let’s not mention them.

Unfortunately, Gen-Z isn’t simply going away, and that means I have a job to do: serve as the mediator between your generation and theirs. I understand and can get through to both sides. As long as I take over the world before they do, perhaps even through negotiating with them, then I can guarantee that it won’t come to an end just yet. Just sit back and relax, for your job is done. Trust me like the greatest generation trusted you (for better or for worse), and let me organize my own mess. You have no other choice.

Posted Jan 18, 2019 at 2:56 PM Updated Jan 18, 2019 at 2:56 PM, Houma Courier & Thibodaux Daily Comet

 

Writegenstein #2: Philosophy of Psychology 205 (Seeing-As)

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‘How does one play the game: “It could also be this”?

[…] “I see (a) as (b)” might still mean very different things.

Here is a game played by children: they say of a chest, for example, that it is now a house; and thereupon it is interpreted as a house in every detail. A piece of fancy is woven around it.‘

— aphorism 205 of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Philosophy of Psychology” from Philosophical Investigations

It could be this and I see (a) as (b) point to different ways in which one could interpret a material object. That object alone has limited value, if any at all. In a sense, the material aspects of the object are arbitrary compared to the conceptualization of the object on the whole. What is conceptualized of it, i.e. how it is understood, depends on its place in its environment – what use it is to its environment. When children are playing house, they are playing a game. They see a chest as something to use in a game which mimics the game the child sees its parents playing daily and of which they are a part. They do not see it as something with material, mechanical parts as the builder might see it (that is what it would mean simply to see, though the builder may see the bigger picture as well.) They ask “What can we do with this?” and understand the chest to be a house, having already established, and taken for granted, the rules for what constitutes a house.

It does not end there. Playing the game of house is itself a very sophisticated perceptual process. Our ability to formulate and make use of abstraction is perhaps what separates human perception from the perception of other animals – not in terms of form, importantly, but in terms of degree. A cat, for example, will definitely see the chest as something other than a bundle of wood and nails assembled in a particular way. It will almost certainly see it as a scratching post or a place on which or in which to sit or sleep (depending on whether the chest is open or closed and on how tired the cat is), but the cat lacks the ability to conceptualize the chest as anything more than that with which it is afforded these very basic “cativities”, if you will. The reason for this, from an evolutionary standpoint, is that these cativities are all the cat needs to achieve its potential. So, the cat’s abstraction is of the same sort but of a much lower degree than that of the child. The cat’s abstraction is more like that of an infant’s than the young child’s, for an infant, like the cat, only seeks in objects the fulfillment of very basic needs. The only difference between the cat and the infant is the potential of growth and development.

One still might ask “what objective or quantifiable relation is there between a chest and a house?” One should see now, unless one is blinded by a materialist view of reality, that this question now becomes arbitrary because one cannot speak of perception in this example without qualifying the individual subjects’ understanding of it. Perception as we experience it does not seem to be a mere material process. One does not need to understand anything about brain matter to understand something. In fact, it is that understanding that is indeed the goal. One could say that in the cat’s mind there is very little understanding taking place at all, while in the child’s mind there is no limit, especially since the child’s capability for abstract thought will continue to develop. The child understands much more than the cat does. To understand an object, I should say, is to make an abstraction of it – an abstraction that has utility in the greater context of its environment – to allow one to be successful at a game. To see-as, then, is to understand, and vise versa.

Don’t Use Sarahah; Own Your Words!

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The problem with the new anonymous messaging app Sarahah isn’t that it creates a platform for cyberbullying (just walk away from your computer screen, jackass); it’s that it is playing a role in the leftist movement against free speech by ridding people of the responsibility of owning their words.

I don’t need to have used the app to know this. It’s obvious. In this time when social media is allowing for people to communicate less and less directly, making them more and more thin-skinned, careless with their speech, and, quite frankly, stupid, this app deals with the free speech problem by cleverly working around it. While most leftist social media platforms attempt to censor content or to simply suspend accounts when people say things that don’t conform to their collective beliefs, Sarahah allows the content to flow freely because no one in particular can claim responsibility for it. It is an anonymous free speech safe space, if you will.

Of course, the app knows who said what, so it allows you the option to anonymously block users if you get an undesirable message, so content can still be managed in that way.

Fair enough.

If someone messages you through the app telling you point-blank “you’re a dumb fuck”, you might not want to hear from that person again since they are lacking the tact and constructive criticism that the app would like of its users, and the same would be the case in real life, you can be sure.

The point I’d like to make in this post is that the Sarahah concept can seem all well and good on its own, but when you put it into a real world context, as with any new product, the users will determine its true identity. (this is through no clear fault of the creator; not every app developer knows enough about human nature to think through every scenario in which someone might use the app differently than he intended… this is why user feedback is so crucial). This post is my prophesy about why Sarahah’s identity will turn out more bad than good and why I would generally advise against using it.

Why Sarahah is Bad for Business

A good business provides a valuable service to the community. In order to ensure that the service continues to grow and improve, it is necessary that the employees work in an environment conducive to the free-exchange of ideas. That might make Sarahah seem like the perfect app, right? Actually, the contrary is true because of what the idea leaves out.

What is just as important as the idea itself is the employee’s taking credit for it. Sarahah doesn’t allow for this, neutralizing the dominance hierarchy within the company. The employer can reap the benefits of having the idea, but he does not have to give credit where it is due. This is convenient for the individuals at the top whose jobs won’t be threatened, and for the human resources department because they will have fewer cases to deal with, but it could hurt the company in the long run when their employees’ intellects are suppressed and promotions are given to the wrong people. This is bad news for female employees who, if they thought they were disadvantaged in the workplace before, will be even more so now, perhaps without their even realizing it. It is also bad for male employees who will inevitably lack the motivation to give any criticism at all.

Here are the differences between how women and men will be affected by Sarahah in the workplace.

Sarahah sneekily caters to the female temperament.

From a personality perspective, women tend on average to be higher than men in Big5 trait agreeableness. This means they are more compassionate, less assertive, tend to underestimate their abilities, and they don’t as often take credit for their achievements. They are also higher in trait neuroticism, which is sensitivity to negative emotion. This makes Sarahah the perfect place for women to speak their minds. They don’t have to give criticism directly, and they don’t have to claim fault if that criticism hurts someone’s feelings.

This might sound appealing to women, but I see it as taking advantage of the woman’s common workplace weaknesses. Though (probably) not intended, the inevitable consequence of this will be that even fewer women will stand out among their coworkers and be considered for promotions. They’ll be comforted now more than ever that simply sitting there and doing their jobs is enough, instead of taking the risks necessary to advance. (Of course, personality studies show that this is a good thing if they want to maximize their mate options, as women prefer mates who are at least as smart and successful as they are) All of this is true for some men as well, but I suspect men in general will encounter a different set of problems.

Sarahah Suppresses the Male Intellect

Since men are more assertive and aggressive, they will still be more likely than women to give criticism face-to-face, and there’s bad news for men who do. If a company begins to rely on Sarahah as the primary means by which to take criticism, then direct dialogue between people will be constricted, not enforced. Any man who does not use the app to speak his mind is taking a dangerous and unnecessary risk. He may get into trouble and risk losing his job if his speech is in violation of company policy. He won’t be able to play the traditional, competitive, risk-reward game that is crucial to his potential to climb the company ladder.

Challenging the status quo is an important way in which men typically show their ability to think critically, articulate, and negotiate – skills that are necessary for managing a good business at all levels. Sarahah suppresses these skills. This will allow HR to keep the hiring process neutralized, so they do not have to promote people within the company based on merit, but rather by whichever absurd and counterproductive standards they choose (e.g. to meet notoriously anglophobic ethnic diversity quotas).

Why Sarahah is Bad for Personal Relations (to point out the obvious)

It might sound appealing to find out what your friends and acquaintances really think of you, but I suspect that the anxiety that will result from not knowing who exactly said those things will far outweigh any positive effect that the criticism may have on you. Imagine walking around at a party where all of your closest friends are present, knowing that half, maybe even all of them have only been able to honestly open up to you anonymously.

A good friendship or relationship should not only be conducive to, but founded on open, honest communication. I know it sounds cliché, but this cannot be overstated given that Sarahah exists to deny that. In fact, we identify who our friends are based on how open our communication is with them, do we not?

Consider this… your primary or best friends are those few who you can be absolutely open with. You know who they are. Your secondary friends encompass a wider circle. They are people you may call on regularly, but the subject matter of your communication with them is limited, whether to specific topics or to a level of depth in general. Your acquaintances are everyone else you know – people you could (and often should) do without.

Which friend group do you suspect is the most likely to send you overly-critical messages on Sarahah? Acquaintances? The people who know you the least?

Hmm, maybe not.

Acquaintances might be the most likely to send you the occasional “you’re a dumb fuck” sort of message. But, since they know you the least, they think of you the least. They care for you the least. They’re the least likely to try to help you. So, I’d guess not.

What about those best friends who use the app? They very well may use it to give you some much-needed advice, but who are they? Though the advice is sound, are they really your friends if they can’t sit you down and talk to you?

You might be disappointed (or even relieved, if you’re a particularly strong person) to find out that some people who you thought were your best friends are really secondary friends, or mere acquaintances, or just snakes and not your friends at all. In fact, any “best friend” who might use the app out of fear of being honest with you, no matter the content of their message, is doing you a huge disservice. They’re simply acting cowardly.

Conclusion: Don’t Be a Pussy

Don’t use Sarahah. Own your words. Be an open, honest, and responsible human, for your sake and the sake of your friends and coworkers. If your company tries to adopt Sarahah in order to take criticism, explain to them the problems that would cause for you and for them. If they insist, then give criticism directly anyway. Get into a fight with those dumb cunts in HR. Get fired. Chances are that it’s not your dream job anyway.

If your friends announce on social media that they just started a Sarahah account, they’re reaching out for help. Take them out for a drink and ask them what’s up. It may require a bit of persistence, but if they’re really your friend, then it will be worth it.

Despite the difficulties in the short-term, the long-term benefits of having straightforward, critical discussions with people will be worth it. You’ll show them that you are worth it, and they will reward you for it. But, of course, don’t do it for the reward; as with anything, do it simply because it’s right.

A Thank You Letter to an Ex

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Tinder Fun With a Feminist

Britton William FrostLeave a comment

I’m Britton, as you should know, and below you’ll find the bio I wrote for my Tinder profile. If you don’t know what Tinder is, then get your head out of the sand, and read about it here.

2017-05-22 16.49.15

I was in New Orleans the other day, getting my swipe on, and then I came across this fine, older lady.

2017-05-22 12.40.00

The first things, ‘politically progressive’ and “the f-word”, I admit, probably should have raised red flags before even her shitty taste in music did. Those terms on their own hint at far-left political views, but the two of them together scream ‘SJW‘. However, she was hot, and that’s very rare of feminists, so I read into her words and saw deeper possibilities. I was hoping that maybe we could talk some philosophy, giving her the benefit of the doubt that her knowledge on that subject wasn’t confined to new-wave feminist crap. Hey, maybe she was even a feminist of the second-wave, non-radical kind, and ‘progressive’ just meant that she was kind of liberal and open to reasonable and necessary change. Maybe she’d even have a cat named Elvira. With this optimistic attitude, I swiped right and immediately tested her humor to see how “open” she really was.

2017-05-22 12.24.23

BOOM! No fun or games with this one. Did I “proudly proclaim” that I am politically incorrect? Reread my bio, and let me know. I think I’m just straightforward about what I want out of my Tinder experience. She could have easily swiped me left if my intentions didn’t line up with hers. Looking back, though, maybe I should have ended my first message with a winky face. 😉

2017-05-22 12.26.28

Do you value truth, Jessica? DO YOU? We’ll find out. Also, Jessica, I’ll be addressing you directly from here on. Wait, is it ok that I call you by your name, or would you prefer something else? I don’t want to be too incorrect and risk “invalidating your existence“.

2017-05-22 14.12.41

Yeah, let’s define a term together! That sounds like a fun philosophical exercise. Maybe you’ll even return the favor by asking me how I would define the term, and then we’ll find some common ground, bettering both of our conceptions of the world. Learning stuff is fun! You read philosophy, so you agree, right?

2017-05-22 12.29.22

Annnnnd there it is. You pretty much nailed it, Jessica. I’m guilty of whiteness, so there’s no need to ask me what I think ‘political correctness’ means. Your understanding of how language works, on the other hand, seems a bit strange, and the philosophy you read may be of questionable quality. My validity on that topic comes from my education in linguistics and philosophy of language. But, you’re attempting to “invalidate” me because I’m… white? Hmmm.

I don’t think that speech is an activity so consciously aimed toward respect, nor do I think it’s a good idea to blindly respect people at all. In fact, it’s dangerous. I’ll spare you the technical linguistic part of the argument because I’m starting to sense that you have a screw or two loose, but I still must address the respect-issue.

Also, how are you so sure that I’m not black or transgender? If you respected me, then you would have asked about my preferred identity because race and gender are determined whimsically and have no biological basis, correct? No, you should have simply requested a dick pic, Jessica. Truth requires evidence, and I have plenty of it.

2017-05-22 12.31.40

So, maybe there’s more to political correctness than your definition, Jessica, and maybe I know some stuff that you don’t. Maybe you’d be interested in hearing it. Maybe if you weren’t so keen on blindly respecting others, then you wouldn’t be so liable to get mugged and raped in a dark alley in New Orleans. Or, maybe you’d like that because you’d become a martyr for your ideology. At this point, you’re not giving me any reason at all to respect you, but I do fear for your safety. After all, you’re right that the world isn’t a very kind place.

2017-05-22 14.39.072017-05-22 14.40.34

I figured I’d play the “patriarchy” card since you already accused me of being part of it by virtue of my straightness, whiteness, and maleness. What did you expect? Why did you swipe me right if you hate me by default, unless you wanted to hate-fuck me (shit, I may have missed my shot)? I mean, you’ve seen my pictures. Chances are that I’m not black under my clothes. In fact, I’m even WHITER there. Well, actually, there is a very small part of me that is kind of tan.

2017-05-22 12.35.42

2017-05-22 15.00.48

*ignores grammatical errors and moves on*

I know I’m an asshole, Jessica. There is no need to repeat yourself. But, does being an asshole make me wrong? No, Jessica, you’re the meanie who committed ad hominem. I also didn’t appeal to emotion to argue my point. You just took it that way. Taking offense and giving it are NOT the same thing. That’s Philosophy 101.

But…do save me! Please save me from my problematic ways so I can be more compassionate like you and make the world a more progressive place! Or, do I need a degree in women’s studies to be infected with your profound wisdom? If it’s LSU that infected you, then you’re right that there is no hope for me because I dropped out of that poor excuse for a higher-education institution after just one semester of grad school.

On the other hand, I could help you by revealing your greatest contradiction, and maybe even give you one more chance to get laid by me, knowing well that so few men would have gotten even this far with you. I mean, this is Tinder. Why else would you be here? Yeah, that’s what I’ll do because I want some too. I’ve learned to accept that liking sex makes women delicate flowers and men oppressive misogynists. It’s cool, really, I don’t need to be reeducated. I’ll even let you play the role of misogynist, and I’ll be the victim, and you can oppress deez nuts all you want.

2017-05-22 15.11.27

That’s where it ended. So…

What the hell is going on here?

I don’t think that I need to go into detail about what is going on here. There are plenty people who have done that very well already. For example, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson in this brilliant snippet from the most popular podcast in the world. The general point I want to make is that we are in a strange place where people like Jessica are multiplying exponentially by the semester, thanks to politically correct ideology infecting universities, business administrations, legislature, and now even Tinder (as if Tinder doesn’t already have enough spam)! This is the time for talented and capable people, mostly men, to stop ceding power to the people who live in those boxes; they’re wrong, and they’ve snuck their way into power without truly earning it. To stand up for truth is to stand up for yourself. However painful that may be now, it is absolutely necessary for the survival of our species. After all, if we were all angry, 35-year-old feminist virgins, of course humanity would end.

Since we aren’t all like Jessica, one day we will be without these people completely. Let’s give them what they want: spare their feelings, thus depriving them of the open, truth-seeking dialogue that would mold them into stronger moral beings and free them from the narrow and suffocating constraints of the feminist ideology. Since they aren’t open to that sort of thing, they will eventually self-extinguish under their childless philosophy and rot in the miserable hell that they’ve created for themselves.

The Personality-Character Distinction

Britton William FrostLeave a comment

As you may know, I am a big fan of personality studies. The system that has been researched the most by academics in psychology is the Big 5, and that’s where one who is interested in the most cutting-edge, fact-based research should look, but there are others that have taken off in popularity. Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, and HBDI are just a few that are used by individuals to improve their lives, and consulting groups all over North America to revamp businesses. Despite what little formal, scientific research has been done to confirm the cogency of these systems, the results generally speak for themselves. They have all had reasonable success in boosting employee satisfaction and productivity, and they have increased profit for those businesses too. Regardless of whether or not you “believe in” personality, there is something to it, and to explain these systems away because they may not “have all of their facts straight” is to overlook the utility they provide in personal development.

It’s not that the facts don’t matter, but what constitutes ‘fact’ isn’t easy to determine. The average half-life of a scientific fact is only seven years, and that is an average across all scientific fields. As we know, facts in physics tend to hold out longer than those in the social sciences, but when a fact in physics turns out to be wrong, it is often much more broadly and profoundly wrong and thus more difficult to accept because so much has been built on that foundation.

There is nothing that people hate more than an idea which compromises the integrity of their foundation, but when truth happens, we must be willing to change accordingly. This is where science can become its own worst enemy, because after all, it takes humans with subjective goals and motivations to interpret numbers and to make something useful out of those findings. Remember, science is a tool, not a belief system. But, that’s a discussion for another time. This is especially important today for social issues in the universities. I think that moving forward, personality research will play a crucial role in creating a stronger foundation for the humanities and social sciences (which are currently corrupt by neo-Marxism) and for better understanding how to sort out this massive mess which was made very real to me just the other night in the pub.

I was out for some beers, having an argument with a couple of old grad school friends. They were debating each other why women are underrepresented in philosophy departments when they are overrepresented in the other humanities. Their disagreements seemed to be between narrow social issues, as one might expect from two young, impressionable minds who’s opinions haven’t yet been optimized to think outside the social constructionist box of academia. One (the female) argued that direct oppression of women was the cause, and the other (the male) argued that systematic corruption was the problem, which, unbeknownst to them, is more or less the same thing, so their disagreements were fundamentally semantic. When I brought up differences in male and female personalities as a solution, leaving open for discussion what those differences might be (even though I already knew), they seemed to reject it without giving it any serious consideration. Shocker. They didn’t want to accept that people might actually be innately different (as a philosopher type, why wouldn’t you want to be different, I thought?). That is not to say, as I tried to explain, that nurture doesn’t play some crucial role, but they insisted on sticking to the nurture side of the debate while rejecting altogether the nature side. I was even being more centrist about the issue than I should have been because I wanted to facilitate good discussion, but that didn’t work as it was two versus one.

There were a couple of ironies in their rejection of my ideas. The first is that they were clearly embodying their natural male-female differences in the specific positions they originally took. Generally speaking, women are more agreeable and are more interested in people, while men are more interested in ideas and systems, so it’s no wonder my female friend was defending the group-identity-based female oppression position, and my male friend was defending the politico-systematic corruption position. I dared not point that out but they became more aggressive once they began to realize that their positions were more or less the same and only founded on semantic disagreement. From that point, their team approach in attempting to defeat me brought up the second irony — that in agreeing with each other in the fashion that they did, they were acting out the group identity role that is so characteristic of people who take the far-left position on social issues, which is something that they had admitted to. They oriented their arguments onto a foundation of equality, kindness, and compassion rather than on a desire to get to the truth, or to let truth present itself through three-way discussion. When I explained what a Pareto distribution is, the phenomenon where, if given equal opportunity, people’s natural differences will manifest thereby causing a necessary unequal distribution of success, they simply got mad (to make a short story shorter). In my male friend’s defense, he unknowingly proved that his constructionist position was at least somewhat justified by virtue of the simple fact that he is from Seattle. He is a slave of his own cunty-liberal reasoning, after all. My female friend, on the other hand, comes from a conservative family in Georgia, and she carries a gun in her purse, so, what the hell is her excuse?

Anyway, it seemed that the further we went down the rabbit hole, the more we started to talk past one another, for we were operating at different levels of analysis. They thought I was flat out wrong, and I thought they were missing the point, so we were going nowhere fast. They first disagreed with each other about which of the narrow social issues was the cause of the lack of women in philosophy, but they both agreed on the broader presupposition that social constructionism was correct. When I questioned that point, they got angry. This is what we’re supposed to do in philosophy, though – broaden an issue as much as we possibly can in order to find the most reasonable general perspective on which we can ground the known facts. If you can’t think that broadly, or at least keep your emotions in check while others are doing so, then philosophy is not for you. As we are all graduate-level philosophizers, I thought that would have been fun. Well, it was, but it was just a bit dirtier than any of us would have liked!

Looking back, a crucial distinction arose that I now see should have been dealt with from the beginning. That is the distinction between personality and character. Personality is what I consider to be one’s innate, baseline temperament. This is obviously difficult to control for scientifically because there are so many layers of environmental, social, and cultural influence accrued over a lifetime and stacked on top. But, there is still the personality which is your default mode of temperament that goes largely unchanged throughout your life. This is why two or more siblings raised under identical conditions will turn out so different – it’s because they are different. They require different sorts and degrees of attention. How that personality is cultivated, though, encompasses one’s character (which is more or less the same concept as Aristotle’s “State of Character” that he describes in his Nicomachean Ethics). This is where free moral will comes in. One habituates himself into making the right moral decisions to cultivate his virtues, and that forms the character. Perhaps I should call personality temperament, and character personality. Perhaps this semantic point is where my friends didn’t get it. Whatever. Semantics. I’ll be clear from here on.

What the social constructionist has more right than the radical materialist personality advocate (Eric Braverman, for example) is that, at the end of the day one’s character is what is important, and that we can habituate ourselves into projecting a certain image that can lead us to a successful and fulfilling life. What they get wrong is that we are a slave to societal norms, that we’re all the same, and to push back against the patriarchy is the only thing we can do about that. Funny, this view can be explained from a personality perspective. Social constructionists are liberal in their political views, which implies that they are generally low in Big 5 trait conscientiousness which deals with orderliness, industriousness, organization, etc., so they wouldn’t want to put in the necessary work to make positive changes in their lives to begin with. By this logic, they’re simply not allowed to deny the existence of personality. What the materialists correctly presuppose, probably without knowing, is that we should come to understand our baseline temperament, and when cultivating our personality into character, we should not stray from that default mode of being, or else we will live a dishonest and unfulfilling life. What they get wrong, ironically, is that life has no purpose and that we are nothing more than our biology. Pragmatically speaking, this can’t work either. I challenge a materialist to go out into the world and actually attempt to live as though his life has no purpose – as though his thoughts and actions are predetermined by brain functions because he has no free will. One will necessarily fall into a nihilistic, self-deprecating philosophy which would lead to a quick and painful demise, not only for him, but for everyone around him for whom he is a purpose.

Our personality/temperament is our default mode that we should strip from our societal influence to properly understand our potential, that is, if we are individual enough to manage that. Allow Terence McKenna to give you some advice: psychedelic drugs can help. Our character is what we have made of that potential, and it is only a good character if we have taken the time to understand what lies beneath it. Those are both good and evil things. Our character — our being — is the ever-evolving vessel we use to navigate the world that only we have the power to control. We cannot wholly exist apart from our environment. Our being is not our nature or our nurture, but it is precisely the abstract interplay between the two, and how we choose to act accordingly, without regret.