Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 63
I’m coining a new term: Leftsplaining
Leftsplaining is like mansplaining, but by a leftist.
Leftsplaining is the annoying phenomena when a relatively educated, cocky leftist hits you with a barrage of trite arguments, facts, citations, and history which you already know and have taken into account, in order to distract from the larger point being made about the leftist view being limited, incomplete, skewed, unrealistic, and paradigm-locked. To leftsplain is to say whatever needs to be said to avoid ever admitting or even noticing that the leftist view on a given issue is limited, incomplete, biased, paradigm-locked, and not the highest, deepest, realest, or most holistic understanding possible.
Lily Rothman of The Atlantic defined mansplaining as "explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer", which transfers beautifully to our definition of leftsplaining. The most annoying aspect of leftsplaining is that it assumes it is a higher perspective than the one it's being presented with. This assumption is usually based in a sense of moral superiority because the leftist is an impassioned champion of social justice — the most important value, according to the leftist.
Leftsplaining especially occurs when trying to show a staunch leftist an Integral Tier 2 perspective which is more nuanced and explanatory than leftism but which the leftist must deny as it runs counter to leftist group-think and ideological commitments. Leftsplaining is an unconscious defense mechanism that keeps leftists locked in Stage Green, from evolving beyond leftism into a more serious and realistic Tier 2 understanding of political reality. Leftsplaining is often done by the leftist in a smug, arrogant, judgmental, closedminded, self-righteous manner which assumes his view is morally superior to the more realistic and complex one you are presenting, framing your Tier 2 view as centrist, neoliberal, "3rd way", or crypto right-wing. Leftsplaining loves to frame any point that challenges the leftist paradigm as a dangerous capitulation to the right that we cannot afford.
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Example 1: When a leftist leftsplains the history of Israeli occupation and colonization in the Palestine-Israeli issue — which your view already takes into account — while ignoring the larger point being made to him about the limits, distortions, and inadequacies of the leftist view on this issue.
Example 2: When a leftist leftsplains Marxist theory to you as you point out the legitimate virtues of capitalism and legitimate problems of socialism. Any higher, Tier 2 point you make is quickly smothered over with more trite Stage Green leftsplaining while accusing you of being a dreaded neoliberal.
Example 3: When a leftist leftsplains how evil the West has been in their imperial, colonial exploitation of the 3rd world when you point out the underdevelopment of the Middle East. No matter how much you try to show that the Middle East is underdeveloped for organic home-grown reasons, the leftist will leftsplain it away by blaming the West and may even accuse you of being racist or Islamophobic, because hey, all cultures and people are supposed to be equal.
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Examples of usage in a sentence:
"I've had enough of your leftsplaining."
"Hasan Piker is a professional leftsplainer."
"He proceeded to leftsplain to us how corporate profits are exploitation of labor according to Karl Marx."
"She indignantly leftsplained how anyone on the left who opposes trans women in girls sports is not a real leftist but a closeted right-wing transphobe."
"It was impossible to explain Integral Theory to that group of socialists because they could not stop leftsplaining."
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Video example:
Skip to timestamp: 15:20
Warning: Be careful not to overuse this leftsplaining concept, as it can easily become a thought-terminating cliche. Sometimes a leftist explanation is valid or insightful. No one has a monopoly on 'splaining.
It's nice to see a grounded, pragmatic leftist:
In general, though, even with this guy, the problem with the socialist left is that it isn't practical. It just doesn't work because it doesn't understand the realities of survival.
Generally speaking, leftist political activism is not an effective way to do life. You are much better off just pulling yourself up by your bootstraps through capitalism than doing a lifetime of boycotting, picketing, unionizing, and rabble-rousing. I am not saying don't do political activism, but if you're a serious person who wants to accomplish serious things in the world, socialism and leftism is not how do it. How you do it is you build a business, you earn hundreds of millions, and then you use that money to fund whatever you're passionate about. The problem of course is that it's way harder to build a $100 million dollar ethical business than it is to stage a leftist rally or protest. Building a $100 million dollar ethical business would require serious emotional labor and skill. Which is exactly what leftists are avoiding. It would also require a painful worldview shift away from Marxist fantasy.
Here's the cold truth that leftists don't want to look in the face: business is a much more powerful mechanism of social change than political activism. If you really wanted to be intelligent about politics, you would first invest 20 years of your life building a multi-billion dollar business. Then you would do your political activism using those resources. That would be high intelligence. Low intelligence is chaining yourself to a tree and screaming about climate change while police drag you to away. Nothing positive was actually created. At the end of the day the leftist needs to ask herself, "What positive tangible things have I created for mankind?" This question will quickly reveal how useless leftists are.
If you really want to improve the world, business is the way. But it gets even harder because you'd want to do conscious business. See... business is constructive, complaining and moralizing is not constructive. Leftists overlook this basic point. If you care about the planet so much, why don't you create a billion dollar business? Then people will actually listen to things you say. Then you will have resources to promote your message. Then you will have the leadership skills and emotional maturity to lead a political movement.
"But Leo, I don't have the capital to start a billion dollar business!" — Exactly! In the real world you must figure out how to raise the capital from scratch to bootstrap something from nothing. How to convince investors to give you their precious money. Yeah, it's fucking hard and risky. In the real world there are no government handouts and tits to suck on — which is why capitalism is king. You would understand all this if you actually bothered to do serious business.
I'm not saying political activism isn't needed. I'm saying — for you personally — if you're a serious person, there exist much more intelligent and effective ways to make a political impact in the world. But it would require much higher intelligence, ambition, maturity, skill, and hard work.
Just notice that much of leftist activism is simply unintelligent because it is not effective at creating change. And that's because leftists are highly impractical, child-like people. Leftist ideas do not work in the real world most of the time. If a leftist tried to run a billion dollar business he would fall flat on his face. And that would teach the leftist valuable lessons about why the world does not and cannot run on leftist ideals. The leftist remains naive by shielding himself from contact with the cold hard reality of business, conflict, war, power, survival. The funny thing is, by the time a leftist succeeds in building a billion dollar business from scratch, he will no longer be a leftist. Because that pragmatic survival process will have transfigured his view of the world. This is not about becoming rich. I'm not talking about how to become rich. I'm talking about how to become effective, powerful, impactful in the world. If you want to improve the world you need power and resources. But, the process of acquiring power and resources will corrupt you. That's the Catch-22. What every leftist needs is a crash course called Survival 101. But this is no cushy university course. For this course we air-drop the leftist into a war-zone in Africa for 3 months and see how she survives using her leftist ideals.
I bought this handy little MP3 player. It's very portable and great for jogging when you don't want to drag your big phone along. It has all the right features like good Bluetooth connectivity, USB C, microSD card, 3.5mm audio jack, solid battery life, many audio file formats, easy menu interface. It's tiny and light, clips anywhere on your clothes.
Sometimes you just need audio without your phone around. I sometimes even use it to have dual audio. For example, I can play background music in my house using this MP3 player while I listen to a YouTube video or audiobook on my phone. It's also good for playing TinnitusMix. It's also good for tripping when you don't want access to internet or messaging from your phone (a big no-no texting people or posting online when you're tripping, or you will destroy relationships). Denying yourself access to your phone at certain parts of your day is a good thing, but you still want some audio.
Buy Here (aff link)
I've been researching the history of nuclear bombs and Area 51.
I live just 70 miles away from the world's biggest nuclear test range, near Area 51. Hundreds of nuclear weapons were exploded above and below ground in the Area 51 nuclear testing grounds.
This atomic test took place 70 miles from where I live:
This is how many nukes they exploded in Nevada. It's like a Fallout video game:
They would take hundreds of animals and lock their heads and eyes open to stare at the blast so the blast would melt their eyeballs.
Humans, sigh...
The situation in Gaza is atrocious. It's hard to imagine a worse place on Earth to be born today.
Nobody is talking about how much global terrorism Israel's actions will create for generations to come. American and European civilians will feel the consequences for years to come, nevermind Israelis.
