wisdom and intelligence, Dungeons & Dragons

I’ve been re-reading the Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weiss’ Dragonlance books; meanwhile Varg Vikernes was discussing Dungeons & Dragons on Twitter, bringing back many memories to this old dog. D & D character generation was my favourite, as it didn’t involve other people (I usually couldn’t find people to play with, so had to be both game master & player, which isn’t much fun and probably drove me insane). Each character had six attributes; for each, you had to roll a 6-sided die three times and total the scores – so, somewhere between 3 and 18.

The 6 character attributes were:

Constitution (health, toughness)

Strength

Dexterity

Intelligence

Wisdom

Charisma

As with Vox Day’s sociosexual hierarchy, categories can be useful, as long as one bears their limitations in mind. As a child/teenager I wasn’t sure how to distinguish intelligence, wisdom, and charisma, since some people are charismatic precisely because of their intelligence or wisdom. I also wondered where intelligence becomes wisdom – is it possible to be wise but stupid, or intelligent and foolish/unwise? As a teenager, I didn’t get it.

I would now say wisdom and intelligence are two quite distinct categories. Indeed, since the intelligent (let’s say, in D & D terms, those with an Intelligence score of 13+) are more likely to attend Marxoid higher “education” and be pumped full of anti-white, anti-Western lies, you could argue that the less intelligent may well have a higher Wisdom score. It would be interesting to, D & D-style, quantify “Marxist Idiocy” from 3 to 18 and see how it correlates with Intelligence; my guess is, there would be some at the 16-18 Intelligence level who would exhibit little or no Marxist Idiocy, being intelligent enough to see through it; however, they would also require a higher Wisdom score, since wisdom guides the intellect: in a sense, wisdom is the pilot and navigator of intellect.

I was puzzling over a definition of Wisdom, and decided for myself: Wisdom is the realisation of intelligence in a man’s daily acts & decision. Thus, the highly intelligent people who make routinely disastrous decisions and end up ruining themselves & others lack wisdom; and the less-intelligent or dim who apply what intelligence they have can be wise. For the latter, one does not require a high IQ to know that a woman who has a different boyfriend every week, and has no friends for longer than 6 months, is trouble. The highly intelligent are more likely to fail to apply their intellect to the most important matters. For example, Saul Bellow and his gorillion fucked-up marriages. Or perhaps they abuse intellect, to explain away the conclusions of Wisdom and pursue their own folly.

The highly intelligent often seem to limit their actual intellectual activity to highly abstract affairs – mathematics, logic, chess, philosophy, science. In the Dragonlance system, Raistlin’s Intelligence is 17, his Wisdom 14: I find this quite plausible, as he is wise enough to know what will make him happy (power, especially magical) and to largely eschew all else.

There seems no easy schooling for wisdom. It’s mostly instinct honed by painful experience.

the world & mainstream media as contrary indicators

1. I was showing a cinematically-ignorant friend Stanley Kubrick trailers on YouTube, we went through 2001, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Dr Strangelove, and then to Eyes Wide Shut. I told her, “It’s said Kubrick was killed because of this film, it’s all about Epstein-style orgies and secret cults. I used to think this was bullshit, since he was an old man and could have just died of natural causes, but now, well, who knows.”

With 2001, FMJ, Dr Strangelove, it sufficed to begin entering the film’s title. Usually, YouTube autocompleted, with “trailer” as one of many of options. If not, I could just enter the full name and “tr”. For example:

When it came to Eyes Wide Shut, it was a different story:

How curious. Autocomplete suddenly doesn’t work.

Lastly, I entered “eyes wide shut trailer” and got:

That’s right: zero autocomplete results for “eyes wide shut trailer”.

My friend looked rather perturbed at this point, before I’d even found & shown her the trailer: after she’d seen the trailer she looked even more alarmed. Everything I’d vaguely speculated about Cabal killing Kubrick suddenly seemed not wholly implausible, if YouTube (owned by Google, i.e. Cabal-tech) was discouraging the casual viewer from Eyes Wide Shut.

2. Later I thought – one can use Cabal organs such as the mainstream media, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, as contrary indicators: if they conspicuously hide a film, it is probably of interest (for its content, if not its form); if they attack someone, he is probably a good man, or at least against their interests.

This is mostly why I have faith in Donald Trump: the vitriol and hatred directed against him by the powers of this world. I briefly wondered if it was a trap, if Cabal were merely propping him up as an apparent bad guy – but that too many people believe the mainstream media: I don’t think it would be worth the support of the 5% of “conspiracy theorists”, to then lose the 30%-or-so who believe whatever CNN tells them to believe.

3. I derived my own sense of “the world” as the domain of evil from experience and observation; this is why I enjoyed this line of Alessandro Baricco’s:

“La guerra l’avete vinta. Questo le sembra un mondo migliore?” – “You won the war. Does this seem a better world to you?”

The world seems to me a sty of iniquity and corruption, amidst which some life implausibly flourishes. When I consider the pattern of good & evil, it is almost always so: the top-down governmental or organisational powers (NGOs, charities, universities, media, celebrities, actors, rockstars) operate on a spectrum between ineptitude & evil; and the good comes to be by chance, in overlooked nooks & crannies.

‘To tell you the truth,’ replied Gandalf, ‘I believe that hitherto… he has entirely overlooked the existence of hobbits…. But your safety has passed. He does not need you — he has many more useful servants — but he won’t forget you again. And hobbits as miserable slaves would please him far more than hobbits happy and free. There is such a thing as malice and revenge.’

Whatever has mainstream acclaim is typically either evil or a piece of indigestible goodness, gnawed within the maw of the wicked & the vile. When academics, journalists, or politicians praise Shakespeare, Mozart, Tolkien, they are chewing viciously on that which was hitherto overlooked; they wish to grind it down, to denigrate and mock it – hence, the ghastly modern productions of Wagner; and, I would imagine, the upcoming CIA Amazon Lord of the Rings show.

But within every system, there must arise a contradiction (perhaps even from the very heart). Hence, the first season of True Detective, or Donald Trump.

is Trump /ourguy/?

I try to judge by actions, not words; though in certain cases, words are equivalent to action.

It is true that Trump is surrounded by neo-cons and Swampistas. It is true that he talks more about Israel than America, more about black/hispanic employment than the whites who basically were America in the 80s/90s.

As a high-level politician he has few options. He needs establishment men who know the system, otherwise the lower-downs will simply drag their heels and cross their arms. My feeling is, he is slowly “turning” those he can (possibly Barr, though he could be pure Swamp) and discarding those he can’t (McMaster et al.). I feel no dismay to see Bolton’s frankly magnificent moustache

Bolton stache 2

in Trump’s environs and aura – provided there are no wars.

I assume, when Q said “trust Sessions” and Trump disparaged the man, that Sessions was instrumental in the widespread trafficking arrests and will later play a key, public role; and Trump is playing his usual Bane/Sun Tzu game of misdirection: theatricality & deception.

One must consider the God Emperor’s actions. Yes, he hired Bolton. Did he then bomb Iran, Syria, Russia? No. Well then, perhaps he is playing a broader game.

As regards his Israel/black/hispanic pandering, this is simple triangulation. Were I an American, I would vote for him as he is, purely on the basis of the mainstream neo-con/lib media’s hostility. And I dare say many real Americans feel likewise. There is no reason to seek our vote: he already has it.

There is no point wooing the SJWs: they would never vote for a straight white male goy.

So, Trump flatters the middle: those blacks & hispanics who don’t want gibs & grievance studies, and the penumbra of whites who still think of Republicans as the Nasty Party but can be won over.

From the triangle of political support, Trump ignores and even inflames his inveterate enemy, the hard Left; he mostly ignores his hardcore support; he woes the middle. The Israel shilling is strange, from my European perspective; but I realise many of the normie-con Right in America regard Israel as the Holy Land, and in a sense Israel is a proxy for white identity, bizarre though it sounds to me – Israel is a freakish grey zone, hated by the Left and highly distrusted by the dissident Right, adored by the normie-con Right, most likely funding the Left who hate them – a nutty melange of post-WW2 insanity of which Trump is no doubt well advised. As The Z Man observed:

This tendency has now reached the absurd with white politicians criticizing non-whites based on the Israeli standard. If Trump wants to mock a dingbat like Ocasio-Cortez, he has to frame it as a defense of Israel. Senator Josh Hawley says he would give his life to defend Israel and the Jewish people. He’s not Jewish. He just accepts that he cannot have opinions of his own. They must be signed off on by some group outside of white people in order for them to be valid.

Q has proved an invaluable asset in Trump’s campaign. One of the functions of Q, as I see it, is to reassure the base: whatever Trump says about Israel>America, and blacks, he is a decent chap who wants to serve America as a whole. Every time I doubt Trump, I look at the chaimstream media’s latest vitriol, the Bushes & Clintons, and think, If they hate him, he must be hurting them.

And, objectively speaking, one could consider the paedophile/human trafficking arrests.

The first 18 months of the Trump presidency saw a 743 percent increase in arrests of traffickers over the first two years of Barack Obama’s first term.

Under Trump’s helm, 9,200 individuals were arrested on suspicion of human trafficking in 18 months. Under Obama, 1,238 were arrested for trafficking during his first two years. During eight years in office, Obama’s administration made only 42 more arrests for human trafficking than Trump’s administration made in his first 18 months!

The corn supply is cut off; the elites are clearly unhappy, shaking even.

My guess is, at some point there will be mass arrests and things will become clearer; though even then, I can see Trump disavowing and attacking his attack dogs – it is a pretty consistent Trump tell, that when he publicly jeers at a loyal servant like Sessions or Bannon, the victim is doing his & Q’s work, and Trump can later look amazed and say “it was nothing to do with me! I fired him like a dog!”

For those in doubt, I would say merely – has Trump started any wars; has he destabilised any countries; have the paedophile networks been attacked under his reign? has the old enemy been afflicted & dismayed?

And, I wager, the God Emperor will bring the thunder soon enough. There will come a moment, a casual aside, and then the drums will roll and the veil be lifted.

book report: Last Comes the Egg, by Bruce Duffy

A book I bought purely off the back of Duffy’s magnificent The World As I Found It (1987), a fictionalized biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I was frankly staggered by the Wittgenstein book, which also demonstrated insight beyond mere research & writing; and so I was inevitably disappointed by Last Comes the Egg.

It’s superficially a typical American MFA program thesis, a 1960s coming-of-age novel following a young boy whose mother dies, he gets in some scrapes with other boys, runs briefly away from home, steals things, learns more about his mother etc. etc. I was reminded of the numerous American short stories I read online, back when I was (vainly) trying to get my own work published: these American tales all seemed to be about a 40-50-something writer who was going through a painful divorce and then remembered going fishing with his grandfather when he was 10, and how it taught him so much about hardship and life, etc etc. It’s not that I dislike the idea; it’s just that I kept coming across the same basic paradigm and after a while sighed glumly when the story went from “Janice broke my graduation cup when she left. As the shards fell, I thought of my grandfather Jake, pulling a knife out of his boot when we were camping in the woods around Missougharie Bay, I was 8 and had never fished before in my life, but boy I was about to learn.” It gave me the weird feeling that Americans all inhabit essentially the same mythic world of 40-50-something divorces and fishing trips with grandpa; as if all Americans are one person, probably called Bill.

The Duffy book is well-written and well-crafted; and though the whole thing is told through the eyes (and tongue) of a child, which necessarily limits its range, it has many fine passages, e.g.

About then, Father Nivas comes thudding up in the black ‘Nivasmobile,’ a smoking police-junker ’53 DeSoto so charred and salt-eaten it looks like a giant meteorite on wheels.

And, amusingly in 2019, there are pre-SJW references to “coloureds” and “niggers” on almost every page, e.g.

Look, I know I probably sound like a total nut, always seeing coloreds everywhere now. But sure enough, as we hit the 4-H with the big white columns and the flags – well, on the lot, under the pink and green paper lanterns, there’s a whole congregation of coloreds parking the cars.

I most enjoyed the young black kid, Sheppy, with whom the protagonist absconds for a few days in a stolen car. Duffy really hits the black speech patterns and behaviour; it’s neither sentimental nor judgemental – it would probably be impossible today, to describe the casual brutality and recklessness of the black community, but then this is a book from 1997.

As with The World As I Found It, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone uninterested in the characters or milieu; perhaps, a reader uninterested in Wittgenstein, Russell, G.E. Moore, pre-WW2 Cambridge, would find World a tedious read. I found Last Comes the Egg enjoyable enough but because I am almost totally uninterested in these coming-of-age tales, and Americana, I merely chugged pleasantly along, admiring the craft and prose, and was glad when it was over and I could go on to other books. I would venture, however, that anyone who grew up in 60s America might find it as gripping as I did The World As I Found It.

“symbolism will be their downfall”

Q has repeatedly stated variants of “symbolism will be their downfall”. The first mention, at the very start of Q:

It is worth considering this sentence: “their need for symbolism will be their downfall”.

Why their downfall? I presume it makes it easier for Q & affiliates to identify the bad actors, although surely some manner of legal proof would also be necessary, in a court of law. Or: once the symbolism is made clear, the normies will begin to see it, and believe that those flaunting said symbolism are, in fact, paedophiles and Satanists.

The first part of this sentence interests me more: “their need for symbolism” – why does Cabal need symbolism? It could be simply psychological. I note that, as a keeper of many secrets, a secretary to myself and others, when I am in a group with another who knows, I often allude to that which only we two are privy: it’s rather like, in Goodfellas, after stabbing Billy Batts and carrying his body around in their car boot, the gangsters eat at Tommy’s mother’s, she shows them a painting which eerily resembles Batts, and Jimmy Conway notes, humorously, “looks like someone we know” and they all laugh; the mirth arises in part because one party, Tommy’s mother, has no idea what they are talking about.

I feel that the elites enjoy flaunting their marks of distinction, partly because we, the plebs, don’t get it – our ignorance is part of their pleasure. On another level, if Cabal is decentralised, rhizomatic, it is considerably harder to crack. Break one cell and you get maybe a dozen agents, with no leads to the next; there is no membership list, no central registry by which they could all be brought down. It would make it a lot harder to coordinate in fine, which would explain why Cabal agents sometimes seem bewildered, or attack each other, or even accidentally praise non- or anti-Cabal agents, before the school of fish phenomenon reins them in. The loss of fine control is probably worth it, to insulate each cell from its neighbour, and especially to insulate the higher-ups from pleb-tier (Antifa, shrieking SJW) assets, middle-management (FBI and CIA), and even from the Clintons and Bushes.

Thinking about how I would do it, were I the Cabal mastermind, I would create orders of obscurity and power, so the highest – the least conspicuous, the most powerful (Rothschilds) – would be as far as most investigators could get, never suspecting that even these shadowy, potent agents are, at the end of the day, mere factotums for a higher, almost invisible paymaster, a payseur if you will.

It would be interesting to know how the higher-ups communicate and recruit. Presumably, they accept ignorance as the price of security, that without a central registry and HR system, no one is really sure who is Cabal and who is just there for the ride. The symbolism, e.g. the black eye club:

and the circled thumb and finger over one eye:

among others, may be a kind of uniform and badge of membership – if you meet someone at a party and are unsure, Is she Cabal like me?, you then see her in the above pose, and know, Ah. 

In this sense, Cabal may need symbolism as a school-of-fish identifier, to know which fish are authoritative and which are not. It is possible that even the highest paymasters don’t know if such & such a vapid popstar is Cabal or not, and so they rely on these symbolic shows of allegiance. 

It would be interesting, since the symbolism seems highly simplistic, to feign membership and see what happens. My guess is, the Cabal structure would somehow pick up on a foreign body and test its purpose. Along with symbolic shows, there are most likely also rituals of degradation and violence, e.g. the receiving of a black eye, and the destruction of children through rape, especially anal rape (another black eye, of sorts). 

I get the feeling there is a great deal of looseness to Cabal structure, that individuals may disagree, may even hate each other, may be disinclined to certain courses, but it’s accepted and tolerated, provided they are largely aligned to Cabal goals, or at least do not oppose them.

It is disturbing to consider what men like Dubya and “Pope” Francis did to enter the higher circles – most likely, child rape and murder, deeds from which there is no return. It’s differently disturbing to consider who would have the power to inflict a black eye on someone like Prince Philip, George W Bush, or a Pope. 

Whoever this is, they understand earthly power. But then, so does Donald Trump.

book report: Alessandro Baricco’s Senza Sangue/Ohne Blut

I read this in parallel, the German Ohne Blut on my Kindle, the original Italian Senza Sangue in the flesh/paper as it were (my German is much better than my Italian; I couldn’t have understood the Italian on its own). It’s a short but highly effective novel, with its own odd structure, and often seems like five or so novels edited into one novella. Briefly put, it’s about a massacre after (I presume) the Spanish Civil War, and one survivor’s attempt at vengeance, but don’t read it expecting a crime thriller, anymore than Baricco’s classic Silk is a treatise on the 19th Century silk trade.

There’s a dreamy vagueness of focus in Baricco, which I enjoy; it can focus on two specific individuals in a cafe, talking of violence and hate, and then abruptly switch to a waitress and her dreams, and then back again. I am reminded of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the sense both of atmosphere and specificity, of diaphanous mood & coloration, and sudden hard texture. I wanted to quote the book but my Italian & German are too shit to feel confident of my translations at length; however I enjoyed this exchange after the Civil War, when one character justifies his actions during the war, as leading to a better world; the other character responds: “La guerra l’avete vinta. Questo le sembra un mondo migliore?” – “You won the war. Does this seem a better world to you?”

double half-book report: V.E. Schwab and James Hawes

1. Two books I got halfway through before deciding to quit, V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic, and James Hawes’ The Shortest History of Germany. Both are covered with mainstream media praise, e.g.  “Marvellous” (Publishers Weekly), “Smart, Funny and Sexy” (Independent) for Schwab’s, and “Sweeping and confident” (Observer) and “Authoritative” (New European) and “A must-read” (Economist) for Hawes’. Both books were gifts, and I found both depressingly mediocre and unauthentic.

I knew Hawes from a similarly disappointing book of his, Rancid Aluminium, which was likewise touted as “a laugh outloud rollercoaster, best novel in 30 years, I couldn’t stop laughing, comic genius” etc etc., but which I found mildly readable and utterly unamusing, 20 years ago.

The Shortest History of Germany is okay enough but reads like a contractual obligation with little in the way of historical understanding or even interest. When I gave up (p 136 out of 226) it had become steadily more & more Progressive, with frequent huffings about anti-semitism and Prussian militarism, and I got the feeling this would be the “theme” of the remaining half, with everything tied to the Holocaust and no doubt he would triumphantly conclude that this is why we need all European nations – indeed all nations- to be dissolved into a totalitarian stucture called the European Union or the World Union, ruled over by a few Rothschild bankers. I could be wrong but don’t care – even if Hawes somehow veered from Cabal talking points I doubt it would be interesting enough to justify another three hours. Some people are just inherently tedious, no matter their opinions.

A Darker Shade of Magic is similarly mediocre. It’s by no means bad, it just feels like a 20-year-old English Lit student wrote it over the summer hols. It’s standard Fantasy but very Young Adulty, specifically female Young Adulty. It reads like a very young woman’s idea of the adult world with a wishy-washily romantic, tea-stained adventure story and very stock characters. I get the feeling it was rewritten by an editor, or Schwab was at least partially aware of her inadequacies and then tried to inflate and colour certain aspects of the book. The result is an implausible, juvenile Fantasy world, flat characters, with occasional and incongruous brutality and attempts at “depth”. For all that it’s set in a kind of London, it feels very much like a young American woman’s idea of Europe, with quaint ye olde taverns run by gruff barmen (with hearts of gold), dashing young lady thieves (with hearts of gold) who live on their wits stealing from everyone, etc. etc. etc.

2. When I read Rancid Aluminium, about 20 years ago, I wondered if I just lacked a sense of humour since I didn’t so much as smile, let alone “laugh outloud every page” as per the mainstream media blurbs. My feeling now is that Hawes and Schwab are both Cabal-approved little writerlettes or Schreiberlings if you prefer, and anything they produce will be immediately published, lauded by other Cabal puppets, and pushed in the bookstores and online. Hawes’ first, mediocre, book was published when he was 36, Schwab when she was 26. Here’s a picture of Schwab.

It is virtually impossible for a 26-year-old “out of nowhere” to begin a successful publishing career. You need personal connections, and to pass the globohomo sniff test: to be in favour of open borders, mass migration from the 3rd World, socialism, and of course a supranational totalitarian government fronted by men like Guy Verhofstadt, with dollops of censorship and jail time for anyone who disagrees (“Nazis”). What you don’t need are good ideas or writing craft or hard work, as we see with both Hawes and Schwab.

3. Years ago, I rarely gave up on books. Even a bad book has something of value. But I’ve come to recognise the globohomo and, as one would expect, it tends to homogeneity of perspective & expression. Those who serve the globohomo and its vision of a flattened, manageable world are, appropriately, those without much in the way of individuality – for all their cultivated eccentricities, their sexual perversions and dyed hair and drug/drink habits, their zany & quirky & Wes-Anderson-esque whimsy, they possess no deep individuality or privacy. They are tedious people. Their opinions are tedious, and not even theirs, merely a school-of-fish response to the latest Guardian and BBC talking points. And, naturally, their books are hailed as “marvellous”, “dark and gorgeous”, “must-read”s, “sensational”, “book of the year”, “essential” and so on and so on.