21 Comments

DIS is a great way to distill the core principles that I'll definitely incorporate into my own thinking.

The cornerstone of these rules seems to be determining whether the other person is "socially" engaging with you while mentally trapped in the framework of social media currencies (Likes, Follows, safety of their platform) rather than engaging in genuine social interaction.

Genuine conversations focus on the use of productive time and resources, "social media brain" conversations seek to maximize on-platform engagement and the usee accumulating platform in-house casino currencies.

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Dave, I'm sorry to say it, and I have a lot of love for you and your content, but *talking about* community will never be interesting. It's something that has to be done, and as soon as you start discussing and theorizing about it, you risk strangling the thing itself under the weight of self awareness.

I know that you *do* actually build community in real life, but I think at this point that you either have to abandon online commentary altogether (which I do not want you to do as someone who appreciates your content) or accept that it's an intrinsically limited and contrived exercise that will always tend towards rank punditry - and that's ok. We are all gathered here because we share interests and opinions, not out of some nebulous desire to build community for its own sake.

Please take this in the constructive spirit in which it's meant.

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I would put it this way.

“Online” community should be actively discouraged. It’s fake. I think it absorbs a lot of the vital energy in this community. There is only so much “cognitive energy” anyone has. Every “watt” of that energy expended in “The Matrix” Is energy that the real world is deprived of.

I do think voices like Dave would be best served as being a “broadcaster”. I would recommend that Dave continue with his excellent video essays and his weekly podcast monologues/sermons. But the superchat/interactive component should be discontinued.

Further, the recipe for young men to follow today is very simple. There is nothing complicated here. The world is very complicated, THAT is the problem.

The answers are simple. But maybe difficult to pursue in this complex, fake world.

1. Join and be active in a church, or at least a local fraternal society

2. Be active in a physical pursuit, ideally Barbell training, but also a lifetime sport like golf, tennis, bowling, etc...

Take pride in your appearance.

3. Get rid of your smartphone

4. Stay off social media

5. Read a little. Doesn’t have to be much. Just some classics here and there

6. Seek as much purpose as you can in your career/job as you can

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I strongly disagree with labeling online "relationships" as fake. They're not analogous to traditional relationships but their impacts are very very real and powerful. Any movement in the current system that abandons online "community" is basically cutting their own tongue out.

The difference is an online network that is mature and recognizes/discusses its limitations vs one that is heavy on parasociality and abstract/digital only goals.

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A powerful online relationship replaces a potentially powerful IRL one. There is a limited amount of relationship energy anyone has. The online one can evaporate in an instant. If you are in trouble, will the online friend be able to help you from the other side of the country? The world?

I’m not sold on online community. And I say this not as a purist. I’ve been in it. But I’m old enough to not be a digital native. I’ve been an adult in the pre-2007 Before Times. IRL community, with folks like Dave being “broadcasters” Vice these chat room fraternal organizations is a better model I feel.

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Agree it's no replacement, but online does give you more options in terms of shared interests and specialty knowledge to learn from. I think there's probably an ideal ratio of real to digital "relationships" (like 2:1) because you're right that there is only so much time in the day so there is a very real cost to it.

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I agree. The online community is a distraction from true success, and it is especially enticing to members of the younger generations who have not experienced the fullness of a true community. Where such online communities exists, their activities should only happen to serve the real thing.

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Please don’t take this as a pejorative. I assume you are in your early 20s or younger?

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The problem is that everyone in this sphere fancies themselves as a member of the new elite. But they do it from their phone.

Become a fully formed person first. Then we can worry about all the other stuff

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Great work and I'm glad John Carter shared this.

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The distributist is one of our best old heads.

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By old I mean in the scene for a long time. I am about 20 years older than him chronologically, lol.

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Greetings frens.

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Fantastic article. Just now discovered this by way of Deimos Station.

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This is written as if it is intelligent. It isn’t.

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author

Cool

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Wonderfully written! You’ve given me a lot to think about.

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Jul 23, 2023·edited Jul 23, 2023

Wrt #14. CJ Hopkins echoes Yarvin (or is it the other way round? must be something in the air) 😊

🗨 Sometimes you fight a battle because you believe you can win the battle. Other times, you fight a battle knowing that you will lose, in order to get more people to fight the next battle with you.

--

Wrt #19.

🗨 To forgive is to put oneself in a larger gravitational field of experience than the one that first seemed to hurt us.

🗨 Forgiveness is a skill, a way of preserving clarity, sanity and generosity in an individual life, a beautiful way of shaping the mind to a future we want for ourselves.

↑↑ David Whyte, always in thoughtful conversation with reality 😉

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"sustaining humanity’s relationship with God.

Without these two political objectives, there can be no cooperation."

This immediately alienates all those who oppose the current direction of occidental societies and civilisation.

The willingness to use force despite the personal cost is crucial - compare the triumph of islam in Europe and North America with the more numerous yet forever flailing and failing "right" (not that left and right exists in politics in reality, that's purely semantics and nothing more); moslems dare to use force working as a natural spontaneous co-operative collective against any common enemy, no matter what the authorities in any nation does to them.

The "right" should study the strategy and tactics used by the Moslem Brotherhood - the goal isn't victory this quarter or decade, the goal is relentlessly pursuing any and all actions which serves the greater cause, always and in any theatre. (That is not to be taken as endorsement of islam or of illegal actions, as I thoroughly loathe islam and its adherents, but methods are ideologically neutral - if it works, it works.)

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No Mandatory Clause about Slaying Demons whatever/whoever/wherever they be? FAIL!

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Is the fren that distorted creature that appears with soiled pants, some sort of amphibian incontinence advertising?

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