The skank-ho above is Nadia Bolz-Weber. She is the founder of “All Sinners and Saints” Church, in Denver, Colorado. I posted her collection of boring videos yesterday. She has a blog here. What surprises me most is the fact that while she’s a very tedious and childish speaker, she’s not a terrible writer.

I come to a number of conclusions through this fact. The most important being that she has the ability to do something far less damaging, and more lucrative, than her present career. Why has she chosen to become a Christian priestess, rather than start a business? My own suspicion is that she has consciously made financial and personal sacrifices in order to sully the aesthetic of the traditional Christian church. By all accounts, she is succeeding.

One third of her congregation is gay, lesbian or transgender. And they celebrate that fact. There is even a “Minister of Fabulousness”, a drag queen called Stuart.

“Here’s why if you don’t have a drag queen in your congregation you should get one,” Bolz Weber says.

“Because when we were talking about what’s called stewardship, which is kind of the financial reality of our church and people giving and stuff, we were trying to figure out ways to encourage people to help fund the community they’re part of, Stuart goes: ‘Oh I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to get a T-Shirt and on the front it will say This Shit Ain’t Free, and then on the back it’s going to say So You Better Tithe, Bitches!’ You see what I’m saying? It just makes church so much better.”

(BBC News)

We should always recognize the pathological wreckers among us. I’m not talking about the average middlebrow hacks, who have no aesthetic sensibility. They aren’t nearly this destructive.

There are people of considerable talent, who are filled with hatred for anything that is beautiful, noteworthy or uplifting. These broken, empty shells are driven by a passion to reduce everyone else to their own level, and spread their own misery around to their neighbors. I believe skank-ho Nadia is one of these.

Note her characteristics well, that you might know the wreckers. Keep them away from you and yours.

v5k2c2: Where We’re Proud Cultural Marxists

Various conversations elsewhere suggest that there’s some interest in analyzing speech acts. By speech acts, I refer specifically to Jordan Peterson’s argument that there exist “two ways to use language” (0:09), the first use is “a psychopathic goal in some ways” (0:25) inasmuch as “the individual [listener] doesn’t matter” (0:30). This “instrumental language” (1:14) is inherently unethical, in that the speaker has “a goal in mind, which is [his] goal, and… [he] is willing to say anything to obtain that goal” (2:15).

Peterson is usually a very careful speaker; but in this presentation there was some slippage, especially around the term “psychopathic.” I had to look up “psychopath” in the DSM-IV, to make sure I wasn’t missing his point, and I think I understand him. While I don’t think Peterson is going so far as to diagnose everyone he criticizes with a medical problem, I think it’s safe to say that he is criticizing crass PUA types by alluding to psychopathic traits they adopt for the purposes of their game. I think this is a fair assessment. Most people who use pickup lines are adopting a persona which entails shallow emotions, lack of interest in the feelings of others, and getting one’s own needs met, even if these little victories are achieved at the expense of society. Playas really ought to accept this, because our behavior in pursuing wimminz makes such charges generally accurate. Moreover, unlike the wimminz we pursue, who also act this way, we are men, and it is in our nature to accept the reality of our situations, without a lot of stupid rationalization.

Attempts at a critical analysis of Peterson’s point have failed, and the link at top takes the reader to one example. This is not entirely the audience’s fault, inasmuch as Peterson is talking about language, at the same time he’s failing to make a clear point with language. His ambiguity is somewhat surprising, in that Peterson is typically a very clear communicator. At the same time, I am sympathetic, because this is a notion in linguistics, and Peterson has no background or authority in that subject.

Guess who does teach this topic at a big public university?

With this in mind, I hope to clarify Peterson’s point. I also think that there are some important mistakes Peterson is making, which other critics have yet to point out. I’ll attempt to clarify the content of his presentation, and its problems, right now.

By “instrumental language,” Peterson is precisely describing the notion of the perlocutionary speech act, first defined by J.L. Austin, and popularized by (my fellow cultural Marxist, and member of Frankfurt school) Jürgen Habermas. I’ll just call this the Austin-Habermas conjecture.

What do we mean by speech acts? Austin’s work was a reaction to the logical positivists, who argued, somewhat naïvely, that we speak to disclose information. In fact, as Austin points out, the majority of things we say don’t reduce to propositions, with a well-defined truth value. For example:

I want some popcorn,

and

You can borrow my camera if you want to,

and

I think it’s going to rain tomorrow,

Are all examples of speech acts. We don’t say these things to communicate a conjunction of true or false propositions. We say such things to express modal claims, and usually to elicit responses as well.

Let’s suppose one of my readers just watched his new baby being born. After the happy event, the attending physician fills out the birth certificate. The doctor asks the reader to sum up two numbers to get the baby’s weight right. (It’s been a long night, and while he’s an excellent surgeon, he’s horrible with arithmetic.) The reader replies:

Five and three are eight.

In making this statement, my reader has communicated a true proposition, but his utterance didn’t have any metaphysical import. The next question that the doctor asks requires a fundamentally different response, and my reader replies:

I name him Bob.

My making that statement, my reader has not communicated a true or false proposition. He has, instead, caused something to happen. His little boy suddenly has an identifier. In fact, the baby can now be said to be set into an equivalence relation with the word ‘Bob.’ This is the meaning of a speech act. Simply by saying something, the speaker has made it so.

At this point, we should be comfortable conceding at least part of Jordan Peterson’s point, that there a multiplicity of ways to use language. Peterson claims there are two. Austin claims there are at least three distinct speech acts. The most general is called locutionary. A locutionary speech act is the performance of an utterance. It is safe to say that all meaningful statements — true or otherwise — are locutionary. An illocutionary speech act is not the utterance, but is the underlying semantic import of the utterance. The naming of the child, for example, implies that from that day forward, the community is to equate the child with the name.

There is a further subset, called the perlocutionary speech act. This is, in my estimation, what Jordan Peterson refers to by “instrumental language.”

All perlocutionary speech acts carry an illocutionary mood; but very few illocutionary speech acts are perlocutionary speech acts. Let’s analyze a typical perlocutionary speech act, of the type I would use if I were a crass PUA, and if met a new wimminz which I found attractive.

You have such beautiful jugs. Who was the plastic surgeon?

This is a meaningful utterance which doesn’t express a truth value. The illocutionary dimension of this utterance is something along the lines of:

I find your breasts attractive, and wonder if they are real.

The perlocutionary dimension, in contrast, wouldn’t be some communicative particle. It’d be related to a material response, in the world, which I was intending to elicit. This is the sort of “neg” that Peterson describes as psychopathic. He rightly argues that what I’m really communicating is:

Come back to my place and fuck me.

For the record, and as an aside, I know these sorts of trashy negs can be very effective. Even so, I don’t use them, because they really aren’t necessary, and because the women on which they are most effective tend to be the least interesting skanks on offer. Be that as it may, Peterson joins Habermas in describing this sort of communicative praxis as psychopathic. He goes further, implying that an utterance “has to serve every part of an integrated unit… it has to serve enlightenment… it has to serve tradition… and if it isn’t doing any of those things, it’s not the truth” (6:04).

Here our colleague from the psychology department runs into trouble. Peterson conflates perlocutionary speech acts with truth-bearing propositions. In fact, these are not disjoint sets, but they don’t share much intersect space. In our example above, our comment about beautiful jugs doesn’t carry any information that is strictly true. It may be that I find someone’s breasts beautiful, but that doesn’t mean they are beautiful. In the second place, there are many perlocutionary speech acts which are ethically inert. Let’s examine the following utterance:

I sure wish I had a jug of water.

This has no well-defined truth value, but it does have semantic content, so it’s a locutionary speech act. It’s an illocutionary speech act, because depending upon context, it likely means something slightly different than the face value meaning. If I say it in one context, it could mean:

I’m thirsty.

But if I said it in a slightly different context, it could mean:

My car is overheating.

What does the perlocutionary speech act entail? I’m probably eliciting the same underlying response, regardless of context. Namely:

Get me some water.

There are, in fact, a whole lot of ways to use “instrumental language” that don’t make the speaker a likely candidate for the diagnosis of psychopathic personality disorder. We communicate in order to politely ask for things all the time.

In the end, the one thing that I can agree with Peterson about is the need to choose one’s words wisely, and to think about the ethical consequences of getting what he asks for.

Read More:

Jürgen Habermas: The Theory of Communicative Action

J.L. Austin: How to Do Things with Words

NSFW: Contains links to boring lectures, which are infused with audible profanity. One of them also contains adult images. (Trust me, you don’t want to see this old ho’s cleavage.)

You can find this feminist Christian priestess here. Skank ho tatts are a fitting touch.

Credit to Rollo Tomassi, over on Dalrock. Show him some love on his blog.

Paul Klee: Le Feu le Soir (1929)

Down below, Wayne wrote:

Havr you heard of the fungus theory?

This is an open-ended question which has a couple of mutually exclusive entailments. In the first place, Wayne seems to wonder if I know the history of the Salem Witch Trials. In the second, he seems to be asking a philosophical question about lessened responsibility in people who are intoxicated. I think that both of these are excellent, interesting questions, so I’ll try to answer the first one today, and the second one tomorrow.

When I pretend to be a historian (occasionally at work I have to do this) I generally work with 19th Century American history. I am peripherally familiar with earlier stuff, and I’m always interested in learning new things. Unfortunately, this is such a loaded issue that it is difficult to get a fair reading of it.

Feminist hack Kristin J Sollee has authored a poor excuse for a book, entitled Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive. This is an example of the “serious historical literature” surrounding the subject. Some of it is freely available on Google Books, and while I can heartily recommend it as an example of incredibly poor scholarship, its real value is its inadvertent comedy.

The so-called expert who wrote this title? That’s the headcase, on the right. You just can’t make this shit up. This is what I mean by attempting a fair reading of the history behind the witchcraft phenomenon. On the other side you have superstitious religious people, who like to scare each other with spook stories, so it’s difficult to get any sort of level historical interpretation of the goings on in that era.

Fortunately, the original transcripts are all online. As I was reading through them, last week, I marveled as to how wimminz never really change. An overwhelming trend in witchcraft accusations were wimminz who made false criminal complaints against other people, offering up self-inflicted damage as evidence. We all know that never happens, right?

I went back over to virginia dot edu, this morning, and picked a random court transcript in the sidebar. I ended up with the trial of the witch, Sarah Bibber. I think this is representative of the other huge trend in witchcraft accusations.

In the Bibber case, Joseph Fowler testified that:

Goodman Bibber & his wife, Lived at my house, and I did observe and take notice, that Goodwife Bibber was a woman, who was very idle in her calling

Skank-ho princess wanted to sit around home all day, and be waited upon, while her husband busted ass. This never happens among wimminz today, does it?

And very much given to tatling & tale Bareing makeing mischeif amongst her neighbo’rs,

Bitch was a troublemaker, who spread unfalsifiable rumors, given to causing a series of dramatic spectacles, when she should have been tending the kids. Yeah, that never happens today, either.

& very much given to speak bad words

Skank-ho had a foul mouth. Very unusual among modern wimminz.

and would call her husband bad names & was a woman of a very turbulent unruly spirit

Bitch abused her husband. Quelle surprise.

Sarah Bibber was convicted and publicly humiliated for her shit behavior. It doesn’t give details, but I imagine she was chained up in the town square for a couple of days, to be pelted with rotten eggs and old fruit.

She doesn’t appear to have been charged again, which suggests that her punishment was both just and sufficient. Today, of course, we just take all these outward manifestations of witchcraft as second-nature, and let wimminz get away with this crap, and much worse.

Attempts have always been made to blame wimminz’ misbehavior on the devil, demons, and other unnatural concepts. This is a contemporary example, pulled from Dalrock:

The film referred to is a Quentin Tarantino feature, which was released in 2015. I saw it, and found it to be typical of a Tarantino film. It is overly reliant on shock value, with constant use of racial slurs, and unrealistic amounts of blood and gore. It also goes on for about an hour longer than it ought to. As such, I can’t really recommend it to anyone over the mental age of fifteen.

More interesting than the cinematic narrative is the example of a bunch of supposedly woke men, on a blog like Dalrock, reverting to the feminist tactic of shifting the blame for wimminz onto imaginary agents. The female antagonist in The Hateful Eight isn’t possessed by a demon. She’s depicted as just a typical wimminz, who bears false witness against men, attempts to poison her enemies, and alternates between crying tears and showing her tits in a vain attempt to manipulate everyone around her.

Let’s put that aside for a moment. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the devil, demons, ghosts and other spooks exist. Now, even as we make this ontological commitment, let’s also assume that these spooks are so numerous, and so bored, that they regularly meddle in the lives of regular people. Even if this imaginary state-of-affairs were true, in order to lay culpability at the feet of the devil, we would have to go even further, and posit that these spooks had the power to control people.

Even the most superstitious Christian, who has an ontological commitment to these devils, and who believes that these supernatural spooks have nothing better to do than to follow him around, will generally not hold the proposition that the devils can force him to do anything. If he ventures that far, then he’s immediately forced to confront the possibility that these spooks are more powerful than his God. If that’s the case, then one really should cut out the middleman, and start praying to the devils and demons, since they seem to be in charge of things.

If the devil, demons, ghosts and spooks can not make an individual behave badly, but can only tempt such an individual, then the individual retains the moral responsibility to resist the temptation. As such, it remains the fault of the individual when s/he behaves badly. The existence of the devil may give an individual more opportunity to behave badly. Perhaps the devil might give an individual tips on how to be as malicious as possible; but, the actual agent in the misbehavior is the individual, who acts on this advice.

If some asshole at work tells me about stacks of cash that are left in an unlocked office, and I stay late and steal the money, then it’s me who will be indicted for burglary or embezzlement. I can try to lay some of the blame at the feet of the asshole who tickled my ear with the knowledge, but ultimately, I’ll be the guy sitting in the prison cell.

The University of Virginia has transcribed the court records for the Salem Witch Trials and made the raw facts available for public examination. No doubt they were partly motivated by a desire to spread sympathy for the wimminz involved; but, what they accomplished is precisely the opposite. I invite all the brothers who read my site to go check it out. What you read is nothing like the “Fanny clasped her hands together and made the Smythe family fall down dead” caricature that looney wiccans will insist took place. Instead, you read stories of wimminz doing all the same shit that wimminz do today. For example:

• The wimminz who self-inflicted injuries, then blamed someone else,
• The wimminz who fucked various married men,
• The wimminz who poisoned children in her care,
• The wimminz who lied under oath, merely to spread community chaos,

and on, and on, and on.

A large number of men were also tried for witchcraft, and they’re depicted as being the typical enabling simps, which we now know (and hate) as male-feminists. Occasionally, a man was convicted because he abandoned his wife and family for one of these troublemaking whores. On other occasions, a man would be convicted for sharing in the profits of whatever scam the wimminz were running.

A witch is not a poor victim, who has been led astray by the devil. A witch is a wimminz, who behaves like a typical wimminz.

In a healthier era, we put wimminz (and their simp enablers) in the stocks, or occasionally executed them, in order to maintain civilization. Today, we let them run around unchecked, and we pay the natural consequences for this, every single day.

The sacking of Paige Patterson opens up an aperture for me to discuss Christian social praxis.

Patterson, seen at left, is a 75-year old Christian priest. For the past fifteen years, he has been the president of the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary. His career was effectively ended by feminists within the Christian church, who felt that he did not sufficiently hate men enough to retain the title and pension he earned through a lifetime of service.

From the Baptist Press, we read:

During the May 30, 2018, Executive Committee meeting of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) Board of Trustees, new information confirmed this morning was presented regarding the handling of an allegation of sexual abuse against a student during Dr. Paige Patterson’s presidency at another institution and resulting issues connected with statements to the Board of Trustees that are inconsistent with SWBTS’s biblically informed core values.

Deeming the information demanded immediate action and could not be deferred to a regular meeting of the Board, based on the details presented, the Executive Committee unanimously resolved to terminate Dr. Paige Patterson, effective immediately, removing all the benefits, rights and privileges provided by the May 22-23 board meeting, including the title of President Emeritus, the invitation to reside at the Baptist Heritage Center as theologian-in-residence and ongoing compensation.

Dalrock has featured a series of excellent articles about this old geezer’s cluelessness in dealing with our feminist enemies. What no one has yet done is to analyze the consistent failure of foolish Christians. I believe that Christian timidity is driven by a fear that this would entail a critique of a core premise of modern Christianity. The Christian church seems to lionize men who reduce to faggotry, and Christians hold as a virtue the cowardly refusal to fight back when attacked.

Sharayah Colter, a student of Patterson and devout Christian herself, explains that Christianity requires its adherents to be weak faggots, and the Christian church celebrates human failures in conflict. She alludes to the motivations being grounded in a misplaced interpretation of the Christian hero, Jesus, which portrays him being a weak faggot who refused to defend himself.

Patterson holds the conviction not to defend himself personally, following the example of Christ.

It is true that the Jesus character did not raise an army and overthrow the Roman client state in Palestine. This does not mean that Christians ought to lie down and die when they are attacked.

Jesus did not fight back because he had specific interests that did not coincide with fighting. A reasonable read of the text suggests that Jesus’ goal was not the establishment of political hegemony (John 18:36). A reading of the story also clues us in to the fact that the Jesus character was not bound by any of the ordinary physical and social rules that his mortal disciples must follow. For example: he was able to reanimate dead folks (John 11:44, Mark 16:9). He was able to walk on water (Matt 14:25). He was able to replicate foodstuffs, in a science-fiction fashion (Matt 14:20). Neither Mrs. Colter nor Paige Patterson address the differences between the nature and mission of the Jesus character, and that of regular people, who are constrained by social and physical laws.

So, for all you Christian brothers out there, here’s the news:

You are not Jesus.

You do not have the latitude Jesus had. You can’t walk on the surface of the water, you can’t survive by magic tricks, and you can’t raise yourself from the dead.

You are a regular man, and not the hero of the New Testament narrative. Your death will not bring you victory.

You have a positive duty to try and survive in this world. If someone is actively trying to kill you, your job is to resist in defense of your own life. Even the most cowardly and devout Christian wouldn’t begrudge you this much. If someone attacks your livelihood, it is not unreasonable to resist them likewise.

If the feminists come for you, then your job is not to fall on your sword, so that the mob can move on to attack the next brother. Your duty is to sue them, publicize their own bad behavior, and to use any other means which are expedient to push them off you. If they back off, you then have the liberty to pursue them, if you wish, and to spend as much time as you want getting revenge. This is contemporary social praxis, and these rules were written by feminists, so we can not be blamed for following their playbook.

Patterson could have started his own church or school, and probably would have taken the SWBTS into bankruptcy with all the sheep he sheared away. He could have joined a competing denomination, and denounced the traitors he was cursed to work with. He has done nothing. Thus, I can’t feel any sympathy for him, and you shouldn’t, either.

It may be that Patterson is sick of his job anyway, and he may be looking forward to retiring and forgetting the Christian faggots he had the misfortune to try and shepherd for the last fifteen years. Even so, by rolling over, he is shirking his responsibility as a man, and allowing our feminist enemies to be emboldened by his apathy. They’ll come for someone else tomorrow. May their next victim be made of sterner stuff.