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Somewhere I read a blurb that intimated that people should turn their attention away from their favorite blogs and towards their favorite authors. While such advice seemed a genuinely positive gesture, something felt awkward. Maybe it was that I am a blogger and this notion threatened me somehow. For a day it was left at that. Then it came to me. Blogging’s insane gravity is not merely a dumbing down of the public. It is also drawing out the written creativity in those that have their own blogs. When I look out at the sea of blogs out there, what I am looking at is a sea of humanity looking to the written word to express themselves, to create, to share, and to write. In this way, the English language is getting a refresher course by way of society, and nothing could be a greater boon to the written word than to have a wave of home-based publishers daily revealing their worded wares. Merci.
Genruk

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Much of what I have been saying intimates that much of what ails mankind is the result of the limitations put upon him by his civilization by way of cultural inculcation. The question we have to ask ourselves is which should come first, man or his society? This is a difficult, maybe even impossible, question to answer. In fact, even initiating such a contemplation is a difficult endeavor, for where are we to begin? Humans are egocentric by nature, and this is expressed in our want of freedom and independence. On the other hand, we are wickedly social and are driven to seek the company, or should I say the attention, of others. But if we are to accept that there is an unacceptable constraint on human nature by cultural inculcation then we must come to a conclusion as to which agency we should make divine, individuality or nationality. In part, this decision must be made after a painfully pragmatic take on the issue- is man even able to glory over the individual while forcing society to take a back seat. Would such an endeavor lead to social chaos? If man is to truly face up to the social ills that are the champions of discontent then this discussion must be somehow come to fruition and thereby finds its way into the social limelight of intelligentsia today.
Genruk

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When I first appreciated the onslaught of social media, the first thing that came to mind was that it was nothing less than a catalyst for the further degradation of a decadent culture. Of course, that is my typical knee slap response to anything in its incipience, before it has had time to grow past its ugly duckling period. Blogs, I thought, were online soapboxes for the general public to clamor upon about this thing and that. To a large degree I was initially correct. But what I did not calculate was the fact that such egocentricity would soon peter out, only to be followed by people with something worth listening to. My initial responses to Myspace and Facebook were pretty much the same, if not even more scornfully so. Though Myspace is really not my deal, Facebook has come to be a huge part of social sharing that I could not have imagined possible. Again, time let the field of social weeds cull themselves, and now we are left mainly with a scent full field of Facebook flowers. Now with Twitter I was initially aghast. To me it was the stupidest thing on the interweb. Again, how more wrong I could have been is impossible to conceptualize.

So what’s the verdict?  Was there even a verdict to be decided upon?  I would have to say that social media is no longer in my cross hairs of cultural evil, no longer the fomenting agent of our civilization’s ruin.  Instead, the onslaught of social media, for those up to date, has become a way to remain connected with people, to add remarkable ideas for their community to ponder, and to level the playing field for the commoner.  This last attribute might be the greatest of all, for it is threatening to change the whole of our advertising industry, from the interruption-based industry of commercial campaigns to becoming a league of transparent companies that attracts its customers by its good deeds, by its offering of free and useful information, and by good old fashion hard work.  Online social media has become the champion , the freighter even , of industrial transparency. Not only does corporate malfeasance easily come bubbling to the surface of the online community, ingenuous characters are quickly sniffed out and scoffed. Simply put, one’s online reputation is made good with continued, determined, and honest effort but turned sour with frightening ease. This is one of the first positive cultural movements that our civilization has seen in a while, a movement which just might be the turning point for reverting our culture’s immanent decadence into a movement where the West is back on track as an almost living phenomenon.
Genruk

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Bad Natured is, yep, the first cultural step, the grand announcement, that man has a problem.  Be it addiction to drink, drug, sex, or convenient rationalization and self-centered behavior at the expense of humanity, one must first realize that one has in his gritty little palms the pink slip of shame before congruent action can be taken.  But unlike the drunk that needs to fall to bottom of the barrel to find that his lot  might be bettered by abandoning the bottle before action is taken to correct his wayward ways, civilization has no such luxury of time.  By the time the West discovers that its errant ways are leading to its own utter extirpation it will be too late to take action.  It may in fact already be too late, but defeatism is not to be tolerated as policy, and hence the message must continue to be perpetuated.

The West has a problem, a problem that is leading to its downfall, and unless man owns up to this fact , having moved past the age of universal empire, his lot will soon succumb to the age of full-blown social decay.  This will not be as pretty as it sounds, and it sounds awful.  The reality is that man needs to face the mirror of his nature and own up to what he what he sees, not that which he wishes to see.  Bad Natured is simple a transitional aid which serves to help man to truthfully appreciate the equivocations that he has come to believe as opposed to the truths that he has yet to face.  Bad Natured : Why Humans Cannot Behave, does this with minimal judgment and with open arms to help face those dogmas that have obnubilated reality with specious philosophies which have only served up a plate of strife and discontent in the guise of social nutrients.  It is time to take the poison out of social dogma by joining what might be thought of as my social program, aptly called Cultural Inculcation Anonymous.

Genruk

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First off, let’s begin with a clear definition.  To inculcate is to impress upon the mind of one or many by frequent instruction or repetition; to instill.  In other words, inculcation is brainwashing, a lovely term that is all too illuminating.  Cultural inculcation is that ever present hum of civilization that incessantly offers hints as to how a man should think and act within the bounds of his homeland.  In essence, it becomes the social, ethnic, or national origin of ought.  Culture itself can be thought of as the social glue that holds the people under its sway together as a united community.  As the globe became swollen with humans, a culture’s function transcended from merely modulating man’s natural inclinations to that of repressing many of these same inclinations when they hindered the propagation of the society under its sway.  It accomplishes this by way of cultural inculcation, cryptically instructing man in the art of appropriate behavior and patterns of thought.

The vehicles of cultural inculcation are many, some being almost obtrusive, others secreted in the fabric of society.  The obvious source of cultural inculcation is found in the media.  From news broadcasts, marketing, to the general programming, we hear and literally visualize how we are to be.  Men themselves become vehicles of cultural inculcation, as this Bad Natured quote solidifies:  “The point here is that we ingest, digest, and ultimately radiate the incessant murmur of acceptable cultural norms as appreciated on our television screens.”

One of the more insidious sources of cultural inculcation comes from our leaders in the form of propaganda.  It is through propaganda that our political and business leaders literally brainwash the masses such that they can exact their political and corporate machinations.  “Every angle must be examined, every lead that tends towards the ultimate conclusion must be ostensibly considered, and, most importantly, repeatedly whispered into the ears of the unsuspecting public, for this notion to finally reach the pinnacle of success, which is to mature into an inculcated belief, veritable dogma in the eyes of the public.”  The shady side of propaganda is found in the phenomenon of calumny, which are false statements that maliciously made to damage another’s reputation.  The paradigm example of calumny might be found around election time in the myriad of slanderous ads whose only intents are to damage the reputations of the opposition.  Not all of propaganda is to be rebuked though.  “…the point is not to disparage propaganda or inculcation as they are necessary tools of society, for we must sometimes generate such concepts in order to get people to go along with policies that might not specifically benefit men on an individual basis but that promise to be good for the health of the entire society.”  More so, cultural inculcation is the means by which a country comes to define itself.  “Americans are instilled with the notion that to challenge any endeavor of our government is anti-American by definition.  The citizens of all countries, it is contended, undergo such a process; it is called patriotism.”

Next on our list of sources of cultural inculcation are the results of our legislative bodies, the law of the land.  Laws are merely inculcated codes of conduct that are deemed necessary to keep order within a society and to allow for over-sized societies to exist and to further expand in a disciplined manner.  As well, the education system serves as the other source of cultural inculcation that is literally reified into existence by way of ink and paper.  “The education system is the perfect place for the state to begin its campaign of inculcation on the young mind.  Even the routine of daily life is inculcated into young minds, with the notion of the nine to five workday becoming the norm in kindergarten or even before.”

One of the most contentious sources of cultural inculcation is infused into humanity by way of its predominating spiritual beliefs.  The differences found in the cultures of Muslims and Christians are the result of inculcation of their respective religious doctrines.  The puissance of spiritual inculcation has reverberated across the globe since god knows when in the form of the ineluctable holy wars that incessantly erupt when neighboring peoples cannot get the other to tergiversate their sacrilegious notions of God and worship the one true God, that of the other side.

Cultural inculcation even alters how reality itself is perceived by the members of a society.  “As a culture propagates its ideologies and notions, what it is really doing is reconfiguring the brain’s ability to perceive reality, to see the world, from a social point of view.  This notion of altered perceptions has been readily demonstrated by psychologists through various tests.  In doing so, people will see things differently, in a literal and measurable sense, depending on their cultural beliefs and thus their perceptions.”

As can be seen, cultural inculcation is a requisite and cryptic method by which a bloated society can exist and maybe even flourish.   “It is one of the main contentions of this thesis that culture and civilization use the powers of inculcation as a social leash to constrain human nature such that societies can exist in numbers that would otherwise prove unsustainable.  In fact, one of the main functions of a culture whose population numbers are explosively colossal is to instill man with acceptable codes of conduct such that his society can remain intact if not expansive.”  And while we can speak of cultural inculcation until we are literally blue in the face, what we cannot seem to do is understand that each of us, as individual human beings, have been brainwashed into believing that our notion of reality is but a belief that has been infused into each of us beginning in our toddler years, for it is nigh impossible to convince a fella’ that he has been brainwashed when the whole of his society has been likewise brainwashed.
Genruk

***All quotes were taken from the soon to be published Bad Natured: Why Humans Cannot Behave.

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The nature of man’s self-awareness, of consciousness, has long perplexed anyone brave enough to contemplate such a notion.  Existentialism, nihilism, Descartes ” I think, therefore I am” can all be linked to the ephemeral understanding of self-awareness.  Furthermore, men’s intelligence coupled with his consciousness has led to his subtle,  subconscious, and occasionally obtrusive and noxious campaign of apotheosis.  But where did our consciousness and self-awareness come from?  Was it a gift (or bane) from God, or was it Darwin’s notion of evolution that bestowed upon man the ultimate capacity of self-contemplation, culminating in man’s foreboding ability to deliberate one’s own death?  A critical examination of animal behavior, the foundations of human nature, might just provide us with a reasonable answer.

Humans, like many other social creatures, are hierarchical in nature.   The hierarchy allows for large groups of humans to work with efficiency by creating divisions of labor and social significance between the members of the group.  It is the trait of dominance as seen in the hierarchical group that demands our attention here.  In groups of hierarchical creatures, social divisions are in part derived from the relative levels of dominance that are displayed by its members.  Be they dogs or humans, this notion of dominance is one of the most predominant determining factors that relegates members of the group to exist at some specific social position.  Of course, other factors are involved here, including the specific capacities of each member that are either  beneficial or detrimental to the group as a whole, and these capacities will also serve to determine each member’s due in regards to the whole.  For example, members that are exceptional hunters will likely enjoy increased benefits as compared to other members of the group.  But it is the trait of dominance that must be explored here to help us further our understanding of the origins of self-awareness.

The question that must be considered is: How does the expression of dominance determine one’s social position?  For example, when two dogs are feeding together, if one of them is more dominant than the other, then what causes this to translate into the notion that the more dominant of the two will get more meat at the expense of the other?  In other words, why does the canine with the more vicious snap our the jaws cause the other canine to be submissive and thereby consume less meat?  The answer lies in the notion of self-awareness.  For the trait of dominance to be effective, the dogs in our example must appreciate some relative level of self-awareness such that they can compare themselves with the other members of the pack.  In other words, the more submissive of the two must have judged itself in comparison to the other canines in the pack- it must be conscious and self-aware.

In our canine example, these animals must have evolved at some point the mental capacity to understand the notion of the self enough to compare the self with the others in its group, but at the same time must be of limited intelligence such that they cannot contemplate the notion of their existence beyond a basic notion of their social position.  From this we can then deduce that consciousness and self-awareness might have evolved from the social efficiency seen in hierarchical creatures that in part utilizes the trait of dominance to establish their social worth in their group.  At some point in evolution, it was the human that finally evolved the mental capacity to not only be aware of the self, but to contemplate the meaning of the self, and hence the meaning of life and of course the terror from the end of one’s life- death.

Could this be, could the origins of self-awareness come from the simple behavior traits of dominance as seen in hierarchical and social creatures?  Kinda takes the steam out of apotheosis, but it might just kindle a brave new philosophical enterprise that will utilize critical realism in an unflinching search for the truth of humanity.

Genruk’

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As one looks around, the signs that our civilization is moribund are all too apparent.  The struggles of life are no longer based on reality.  Instead, the struggle of humanity is driven by the profligacy born of unrewarding opulence.  First world society does not struggle to find food, but instead is at war with obesity.  Instead of heart-felt speeches of social revolution, our politicians say little but use lots of words, which mostly point to outcomes as if they were origins.  As well, fingers of blame are directed at anything upon which the slime of their prevarications will stick.  What is more, the general citizenry’s lassitude is expressed in its desire for change in everything but themselves.  Whereas the rest of the world needs to be shored up in order to better society, individuals still contrive to only better their material lots at the expense of others, but conveniently or speciously see their actions in terms of their plights and not their exploitations. 

Furthermore, we loudly complain of our banal media programming whilst concurrently fueling it with our endorsement, mostly unawares that we are acting as such.  Philosophical thoughts that challenge acceptable dogma are not only sneered at, but are labeled as the dangerous rhetoric of social assassins, of haters of liberty and freedom.  We hide behind feckless words as if they will hide our real faces, which all too often they do.  And all the while, the West continues to languish.

Where are the heroes of the day, men unafraid of the scorn that following their hearts instead of their pride will earn them?  Where are the philosophers, the revolutionaries, the social vanguards of a new social order, visionaries of honor and virtue?  Has the West chewed them up and spit out cowards and parasites?  As the last years of the West approach, what do we intend to do?  Succumb to the platitudinous ways as a new civilization comes to rip the throats out of our social matrix, or miraculously face the truth such that we can formulate new foundations upon which to reestablish a new Western Civilization?  My guess is that we will soon taste the blood as it chokes the last spark of life out of the West.

Genruk’

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The citizens of each nation, having been thoroughly inculcated with their nation’s systems of belief, are typically unable to consider any notion of governance save their own as proper or appropriate.  Furthermore, man has yet to demonstrate the capacity to consider the governance of its peoples from the viewpoint of human nature, from the natural inclinations of man.  Democracies are thought to naturally have the divine right to choose their leaders by plebiscite.  Monarchies feel it natural for the king’s descendants to be the successor.  Communists, maybe they feel that the person best suited to lead them is the one most familiar with Marxism and Leninism.  But what would the evolutionary psychologists say in regards to a nation’s governance?  If they are smart, they will probably say little.

We here at Bad Natured are not so smart.  Ignoring common sense, this little essay will begin with a look at group formation in men.  Specifically, we will consider group size in relation to familiarity.  Studies have shown that the average number of people that a person may recognize in a permanent setting is around 150 faces.  Tradition villages and clans, etcetera, peacefully exist when their populations were less than 300 people.   As the clan swells above 300 members they would typically fracture into two competing clans.  The obvious correlation here is that men are best suited to exist in populations where they can recognize the faces of their members, with the unpopular notion that men are naturally uncooperative to aggressive towards men that they do not recognize.  Yep, the implications are that humans are xenophobic by nature.  Not very PC, but there you have it.

Now let’s take a look at another aspect of humans, our hierarchical nature.  Far from being egalitarian, man is geared up to exist in a hierarchy, with some men enjoyinga higher social position than other men.  These men, we’ll call them leaders, will typically have three or four similar traits.  They will be more dominant, more intelligent, more capable, and may enjoy a curious dearth of empathy.  In other words, these are the men that will be successful as leaders simply because they have the capacity and drive to earn it.  In other words, by declaiming that man is hierarchical by his very nature, his lot is best governed by an authoritarian system.  Alarming but true, man is best suited to be governed by a dictatorship. 

The factor that should not be forgotten here is that man is also best suited to exist amongst people that he recognizes, The Rule of 150 again states that men can recognize around 150 faces.  Whereas dictators today rule over millions of people, the original dictators ruled over much smaller populations. When clans were some 150 people strong, then the dictators, we’ll call them chiefs, could literally recognize everyone under their rule and would hence govern with every one’s best interests in mind.  They will likely enjoy more of life’s fruits, but they would be much less inclined to do so at the expense of a familiar face.  

Of course, the democratic champions of Western Civilization would like to shatter this notion with the laurels of the plebiscite, but what they fail to mention, probably because they have been inculcated to believe otherwise, is that man is not democratic by nature and never will be.  Believing something to be true is not enough to make it so.  Just because universal suffrage sounds just, sublime even, does not mean that its employ will make for a divine system of government.  Instead, the gears of the democracy use man’s natural inclinations to fear the stranger, to be aggressive and uncooperative towards the stranger, and uses this xenophobia to glean votes.  Politicians denounce the ominous ”them” in their campaigns, building up a notion of an extended family to be fairly governed.  Asking man to vote for strangers only sets the voter up to look for notions of familiarity when at the polls, and this notion does not go unnoticed by campaign managers.

Of course, national dictatorships are no better.  Being a dominant, aggressive, intelligent man sans a normal level of empathy, one can hardly expect a dictator to govern numerous people fairly if they are only a mass of strangers to him.  Given unlimited power, the dictator cannot but fall back on his exploitative nature, amassing as much gold as possible, unconsciously creating a surplus that his primal mind sees as the best course in his charge to spread his seed.  Men in positions of power, no matter their ideology, will succumb to their drive to secure resources in order to secure mates.

What’s the point of this rather rancid account of man?  Firstly, it to stop deceiving ourselves as to what men truly are, animals with certain behavioral drives that cannot be successfully repressed through sheer will.  That accomplished, a cyclopean feat in and of itself, we can finally advance toward a goal that might lead to a world filled with less discontent, with less suffering of the masses at the hands of the elite, and with a lessened chance of social implosion followed by possible extinction.  In other words, we can get exchange the foundations of civilization which are presently built upon specious and convenient notions of human nature and begin the work to build a social matrix that is constructed with the actualities of human nature in mind.  That is the point.

Genru’

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With the realities of globalization, civilization has finally come to its denouement.  How it will play out should be the concern of nearly every human life, but instead we have become inculcated, lulled to sleep by our own fantastical eidolons of humanity, such that we cannot see the cliff that we are fast approaching.  If man is to ever be able to apply the brakes of blind ambition before we approach the precarious edge, man must first come to terms with, and then transcend, or hurdle, the outcome of the marriage between his self-awareness and his human nature.  Instead of denying the veritable nature of man, that he is exploitative, that he is dominant and hierarchical, that he is egotistical and self-centered, that he is deceptive and ruled by a social nature misunderstood by even the sociologists of the day, man must either learn to open his eyes or blindly go over the cliff.  This is the Hurdle of Humanity, to simultaneously appreciate and accept the disturbing realities of our human nature, of our dominant and hierarchical nature, and then to somehow learn to effectively manage these uncomely behavioral traits, or take the plunge into the abyss which is the one promise that our misguided notions of mankind will keep.

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Let us get straight to the point.  Civilization is heading towards the crapper and all that we are doing to obviate our demise is bickering over legislation that is alien to the actualities of human nature.  After implementing our great governmental policies, we sit back and watch them fail miserably, leading us to seek out some scapegoat with which to direct our inflammatory fingers.  What I suggest is the study of man’s social nature and group formation as it pertains to history and especially in light of man as an animal with behavioral patterns quite similar to our chimp brethren.  Specifically, a study of the social dynamics of revolutions and the subsequent coagulation of new governing factions, which over time might settle down into a workable form of government, might prove insightful to our very nature.  In doing so, we must openly dismiss the psychobabble that only serves to lead us to convenient and comforting notions as to the behavior of “other” men that only serve to elevate our own notion of self or patriotism whilst discounting the veritable characteristics that may lead to such events.  Hopefully, this little introduction will foment a purposeful series of contemplations which might lead human insights and workable policies of man in order to finally get out civilization on the correct track before it is too late.  Merci beaucoup.

OD

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