I'm reading up on gambling-related problems (Volberg in AJPH, Shaffer et.al in AJPH etc), and in general I find statements like

"together, these data support the long-standing contention of treatmen tprofessionals and researchers that increasing the availability of gambling will contribute to an increase in the prevalence of gambling-related problems in the general population"

At the same time I'm reading statistics from Europe, and one of the countries with the most liberal gambling rule sets, UK, has the lowest amount of gambling-related problems in the general population.
Any thoughts? I just find this fascinating.

https://imgur.com/a/xuNTV5T
Given the nature of their actions and an interaction with this user yesterday I don't feel confident messaging the mod team with this, but we're a democratic party so I think it's important this is called into question. The mistrust was caused by this comment being deleted - a comment that called out a lie by the user in the image (the lie was left in place while my comment was removed). The user MMSTRINGRAY was then banned for calling out their actions in a frustrated way.
People have been kicked out of the party for far less, and with a culture at Labour HQ that has shown an overwhelming animosity towards black MPs it's important we don't tolerate this kind of mentality as the largest party in Western Europe. With members being kicked from the party for as much as mentioning the fact antisemitism might be being weaponised by bad faith actors, it seems a horrendous double standard to allow people sharing and finding this kind of content to contribute here.
I also worry, given the attitudes shown in the leaked report, that those attitudes might be prevalent here, too. If lenience is given to racists because of "bad optics" then what is the point of us being a political party - political parties are created to represent the values of their members, not just arbitrarily seek power.

What is quality of life?

• Quality of life (noun): the standard of health, comfort, and happiness experienced by an individual or group.

Example: "the things that are needed for a good quality of life"
What is a lobby?

• Lobby (noun): a group of people seeking to influence politicians or public officials on a particular issue.
• Lobby (verb): seek to influence (a politician or public official) on an issue.

Example: "it is recommending that booksellers lobby their representatives"
--Google online dictionary
​
Our goal is to lobby lawmakers on issues that affect the quality of life of people in the USA. The only leverage we have to make sure that issues which affect our quality of life are addressed is our vote, but we are not communicating what those issues are to lawmakers nor are we vowing to vote according to their willingness to raise our quality of life--instead many of us are voting according to which party a representative is affiliated with.
​
To do that we need to form a political platform.
​
What is a political, also known as a party, platform?

• Party platform (noun): A political party platform or program is a formal set of principal goals which are supported by a political party or individual candidate, ... , for the ultimate purpose of garnering the general public's support and votes about complicated topics or issues.

--Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_platform
And that is why we are here discussing what is lowering our quality of life and even why our grandparents had a higher quality of life than we do now.
​
Once we identify why they had a higher quality of life than we do now and why we have a lower quality of life than they did, we can propose solutions and form a platform. We can lobby lawmakers to garner support and votes about the complicated topics and issues which are lowering our quality of life. They can find their own solutions to these issues or implement the ones we draw up, but they must address them. We can only hold them to it if we form a strong enough lobby. What is a strong lobby in this context? One with the power to vote them out or vote them in depending on their willingness to make our quality of life a policy objective.
​
What is a policy objective?

• Policy objective (noun): A policy objective is a desired outcome that policy-makers wish to achieve. A policy target is a specific level or rate set for the chosen objective.

Example: "A central bank may wish to achieve stable prices (the objective) and set a rate of 2% (the target for inflation)."
--Economics Online For Students of Econonomics, https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Definitions/Policy_objective.html#:~:text=Policy%20objective%20%E2%80%93%20definition,(the%20target%20for%20inflation)..)

When a lawmaker makes a law, there is a policy objective. Oftentimes, the policy objective is to increase the GDP, help the stock market, protect the oil or health care industries from domestic threats in their respective markets, or even to protect those same and certain other industries from unfair foreign competition. The goal of the Quality of Life Lobby is to lobby lawmakers to once more make the quality of life of people in the USA a policy objective.

Ever since NAFTA, there has been no policy objective to protect the USA labor market from unfair foreign competition--or from anything else for that matter. From white collar workers to the ones in the service industry, we have been subjected to lowering wages and higher inflation. The cost of living has increased and the purchasing power of the dollar in our domestic market is getting weaker and weaker yet our wages have not risen. Any attempts to raise wages are brushed aside with talks of inflation being the outcome of such measures, but no other solution is given. The ability of the market to correct itself thanks to competition has been overlooked. If Campbell's tries to sell beans for $4.00/can the invisible hand of the market will see to it that Goya or Procter & Gamble will compete with them by selling it for $3.00/can, $2.00/can and so forth until it is reasonably priced again. Inflation is no excuse to not address the cost of living issue in this country. How do we do that? What is causing the cost of living to rise while wages stagnate?
​
That is why we are here. We need to discuss the problems at hand whether they be economic, social, or related to the justice system to identify the root source of each major quality-of-life-impacting issue and potential solutions. We aren't here to find one solution and praise it, flaws and all. Point out the flaws. Find ways around them if you can, or point them out so that someone else may. We need to create a platform on prevalent problems and proposed solutions so that we can lobby law makers and thereby raise our quality of life.
​
Common problems mentioned on Reddit include:

• Quality of life afforded by a 40-hour-per-week job. Many note that their grandparents could work one job and afford a high quality of life, but they themselves can not despite having more education. Many even are forced to work multiple part-time jobs because no one in their zip codes are hiring full time to avoid insurance, sick leave, and other liability associated with employing full-time labor. Leaving isn't an option since they can't accumulate the wealth needed to move (first and last month's rent in new accommodations and cost of living until they can secure a new job in their new zip code and moving costs such as a van in some instances.) As most can see, even when moving is an option, it more often than not isn't better anywhere else hence the widespread dissatisfaction on this front.
• Cost of education. Most people remember that their parents or grandparents could afford university with a summer job. That is not the case now. Many university presidents are paid more than the president of the United States of America for crying out loud, and you or your children are going into usurious debt to finance it--and to boot, that is after your state taxes subsidize those selfsame universities. Why? You know it affects your quality of life and your local consumer and housing markets. You know it doesn't have to be that way because it wasn't before. What changed? How can we get this beast of a situation under control?
• Selective law enforcement. We hear about some reports being prosecuted and others not being prosecuted, but there is little consistency in some cases. Someone steals your bike? Tough luck. Your car? Tough luck...sometimes...but maybe not. We need consistency. Are the police departments underfunded or unwilling? Do we need to commission RAND Corporation to find out and give suggestions? What is the law enforcement situation in your city or state, and how can it be improved? What support does law enforcement need to do its job, and how do we lobby our lawmakers for that support to be given?
• Dismissal of the concerns of the middle class. This is pervasive. You pay $20,000 per year in taxes...and you have nothing to show for it. You have no subsidies under the affordable care act, your kids get no financial aid in university, you don't qualify for any type of assistance, but you probably are nearly out of money at the end of each month. No one takes your plight seriously because they compare you to the most poverty-stricken in society. It's enough to make you resent them. They are worse off, but it doesn't mean that you don't have problems--and as much as you pay in taxes, your problems should be a priority, too. Why are all the taxes put on you? Upper income households and corporations often can more adroitly lessen their tax liability, and corporations get subsidies and bailouts when times get bad, but what about you? Stop being the middle child in a dysfunctional household who has all of the responsibilities to take care of the younger children and none of the privileges of the first-born and make your plight heard NOW!
• Demonization of the poor. You work two part-time jobs or one full-time job, but after rent, food, gas, car insurance, utilities, health insurance (part timers don't get company benefits), and finally day care if you have kids, nothing is left at the end of the month. You even need help with food. You get a food stamp card, now known as SNAP benefits, and despite all of your hard work some people have the nerve to call you a taker and blame you for their high taxes. They tell you to "better yourself" but don't explain who will pay your rent when you are in class instead of at work to do it. They don't explain who will pay your health insurance. They think you get everything for free when in reality medicaid will only cover you if you are the parent of a dependent child, permanently disabled, or over 65 no matter how in need you may be. You are scapegoated and arguably economically exploited by your employer. "Market value" of your skills is used to explain why you are not paid enough to live without a SNAP card despite working for a very profitable company and being very economically productive. If your coworkers and you suddenly couldn't show up, the company you work at would lose $5000-$10000 per day, but somehow you are not worth more than $80 per day despite having only a few other coworkers if you work in a small store or restaurant. Don't get me started on large stores. Your grandparents weren't demonized for working with their hands, and they could support themselves without being had for fools, paid so little as to need charity, and socially scorned. What went wrong for you? Make your voice heard now, too! If your company was forced to pay you according to your productivity as gauged by net profits every month instead of "market value," maybe the poor middle class wouldn't be taxed to death for your SNAP card and you could buy a few luxuries--which you certainly deserve for all of your hard work.
• Tokenism. "Build a wall!" "Stop them from using the bathrooms!" "Let them use the bathrooms!" "Stop the abortion!" "Give the abortion!" "We shall build a turtle fence!" "I think I'll get a woman vice president." "I know more about viruses than anyone!" At what point are we being taken for a ride? When you wake up every day and go to work, how is any of this shit affecting you? The bathroom issue may, but once we know a candidate's stand on that--or any of the above for that matter--it is no good reason to vote for that person if (s)he only has that one stance going for him/her. What actually affects YOU, YOUR NEIGHBORS, YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR FAMILY, or SOME GROUP OF PEOPLE YOU FEEL SORRY FOR LIKE THE ELDERLY OR THE POOR? When a candidate is not running on a single-issue voter platform or engaging in tokenism, they are often focusing on issues that tug at your heart strings but don't fill your wallet. Who cares about a wall or a fence or anything else for that matter if you have less than $500 in your account at any given time and your car could break any minute? I bet the lawmakers running for office don't live with that kind of sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, and if you work 40 hours a week, as I live, you shouldn't either. Vote with that in mind. The goal here is to form a large group of voters who can lobby for issues that affect them with one voice and cut through the fluff that is, quite frankly, not going to affect the quality of life for you at all and only get into office someone who once there won't make your quality of life a policy goal.

​
If they pick on you it's because we let them.
​
Let's not let them. WE have a democracy, and once we identify the problems affecting us and their solutions, law makers can either implement our solutions, find and implement their own solutions to our problems, or promptly be voted the fucking hell out of there. The choice can be theirs...if you make them. We have to form a lobby and a credible voting block--that means growing this sub. The companies kicking our working asses have lobbies. It's time to make our own or forever hold our peace. (It also would take less than one or two hours a week if it takes off for even the most active members since once we identify issues I and other moderators can compile them and the most supported proposed solutions and put them up for vote in a poll so that we can form a list of problems and their corresponding solutions one at a time. We can then have a document which we can use for our political platform and lobby lawmakers with. Once this document is made, it is not time consuming to publish it, lobby other voters with it, and form a voting block around it to lobby lawmakers with and vote them in or out depending on their ability to address OUR needs. Upon the completion of this hopefully less-than-10-pages-long political platoorm document, it can be shared on social media as well to gain traction.)
P.S. To all of the high-income earners, you are not left out. Democracy and rights to the fruit of one's labor and a high quality of life are for everyone. If you are not underpaying your employees, we do not want your money. We want the people they work for to pay them (and probably you, too, so that you can invest in USA companies and create jobs through the creation of businesses or your increased consumption in the housing and consumer markets) so that your taxes don't get raised for their SNAP cards any more than they already have. We are not advocating socialism. Also, one may notice that as we have a mixed economy* some aspects of it are already socialized, like medicaid and disability. We are not going to set parameters on the discussion as we have faith in the critical thinking skills of everyone here to pick and choose from all ideas set before them on the merits of the ideas and not the system the one presenting the ideas may advocate for--or not advocate for. One may run out of other people's money, but you never run out of the money your labor has earned your company, and the goal here is to make sure that the people in the USA do not have their quality of life drastically affected because they don't get an equitable share of that. (One of the goals of this sub is to decide and debate what an 'equitable share of the fruits of their labor' is in terms of a percent of net profits of the entity they work for and what an equitable share of the fruits of one's labor is in the context of nonprofits, public entities like libraries and schools, etc and related minutiae.) If you are a doctor--as much money as doctors make--you still should not live in fear of a missed student loan payment or be worked to the bone with excessively long shifts for years. The same goes for other high-income earners. You should be paid according to your value to that hospital(or other employer), and they should take steps wherever possible--not just wherever convenient--to ensure that you and their other staff do not suffer unnecessarily. Suffering is going to happen, but the goal of the Quality of Life Lobby is to reduce it where it is not necessary and to find ways to do it without creating a bigger problem. Please feel free to contribute your concerns regarding your quality of life and how it can be higher even if you have a pretty high quality of life already or feel that others' concerns are more dire than your own. We are working for everyone here to raise everyone's quality of life as much as it can be in their own context.
​
*Mixed economy (noun): an economic system that combines aspects of both capitalism and socialism. A mixed economic system protects private property and allows a level of economic freedom in the use of capital, but also allows for governments to interfere in economic activities in order to achieve social aims.Apr 27, 2020
Example: We have had a mixed economic system at the least since Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted the Social Security Act of 1935 and a series of financial reforms, regulations, programs, and public work projects called the New Deal during the seven-year period of time spanning from 1933 to 1939.
Example: One of the goals of the Quality of Life Lobby is to lobby for financial reforms and regulations to protect the quality of life of people in the USA from undue foreign market interference and from the affects of a growing population and decreased need for labor as caused by automation, AI, other technological advances, and competition with foreign markets which are not accounted for in traditional market theory.
--www.investopedia.com

About me
My name is Kishan Patel and I'm a soon to be 5th Year Medical Student at Imperial College London and an independent researcher of gambling harm. My lived experience of gambling-harm is through my Dad's addiction which I saw him struggle with all my life.
About All Bets Are Off Podcast
Launched in April 2020 the 'All Bets Are Off!' podcast was founded by an awesome foursome made up of three gambling addicts in recovery (Ryan, Chris and Kelly) and myself (Kishan). The podcast is designed for those that are either in recovery or for people that are contemplating joining us. Link to website. Link to episodes.
The motivation behind the BAME episode
Research has reflected that BAME groups are disproportionately affected by gambling harm. And this is extremely concerning.

• According to the most credible prevalence research done in Great Britain, BGPS 2007 and BGPS 2010, BAME groups are almost 5x more likely to suffer the most severe form of harm and 2x more likely to suffer any harm.

As a team, we had anticipated on covering BAME much earlier in the season. However, it's taken some time to find a suitable representative group of guests to discuss the issues involved.
Topics to be discussed
In line with what we have done in previous episodes, we'd like our listeners to get your backstory and your thoughts on the interplay between gambling and culture. This would give us a springboard for a discussion around several BAME issues.
When & How
The release date for the BAME episode: Thursday 2nd July. We would ideally record on Tuesday 30th June at 6PM GMT - but we can be flexible.
We record over Skype.
The episode would be approximately 1 hour long - however, we'd be happy to accommodate via a shorter segment. Anything around 10 – 15 minutes is highly plausible.
Contact us by DM or [by e-mail](mailto:[email protected]) for further discussion in the strictest of confidence.

About me
My name is Kishan Patel and I'm a soon to be 5th Year Medical Student at Imperial College London and an independent researcher of gambling harm. My lived experience of gambling-harm is through my Dad's addiction which I saw him struggle with all my life.
About All Bets Are Off Podcast
Launched in April 2020 the 'All Bets Are Off!' podcast was founded by an awesome foursome made up of three gambling addicts in recovery (Ryan, Chris and Kelly) and myself (Kishan). The podcast is designed for those that are either in recovery or for people that are contemplating joining us. Link to website. Link to episodes.
The motivation behind the BAME episode
Research has reflected that BAME groups are disproportionately affected by gambling harm. And this is extremely concerning.

• According to the most credible prevalence research done in Great Britain, BGPS 2007 and BGPS 2010, BAME groups are almost 5x more likely to suffer the most severe form of harm and 2x more likely to suffer any harm.

As a team, we had anticipated on covering BAME much earlier in the season. However, it's taken some time to find a suitable representative group of guests to discuss the issues involved.
Topics to be discussed
In line with what we have done in previous episodes, we'd like our listeners to get your backstory and your thoughts on the interplay between gambling and culture. This would give us a springboard for a discussion around several BAME issues.
When & How
The release date for the BAME episode: Thursday 2nd July. We would ideally record on Tuesday 30th June at 6PM GMT - but we can be flexible.
We record over Skype.
The episode would be approximately 1 hour long - however, we'd be happy to accommodate via a shorter segment. Anything around 10 – 15 minutes is highly plausible.
Contact us by DM or [by e-mail](mailto:[email protected]) for further discussion in the strictest of confidence.

About me
My name is Kishan Patel and I'm a soon to be 5th Year Medical Student at Imperial College London and an independent researcher of gambling harm. My lived experience of gambling-harm is through my Dad's addiction which I saw him struggle with all my life.
About All Bets Are Off Podcast
Launched in April 2020 the 'All Bets Are Off!' podcast was founded by an awesome foursome made up of three gambling addicts in recovery (Ryan, Chris and Kelly) and myself (Kishan). The podcast is designed for those that are either in recovery or for people that are contemplating joining us. Link to website. Link to episodes.
The motivation behind the BAME episode
Research has reflected that BAME groups are disproportionately affected by gambling harm. And this is extremely concerning.

• According to the most credible prevalence research done in Great Britain, BGPS 2007 and BGPS 2010, BAME groups are almost 5x more likely to suffer the most severe form of harm and 2x more likely to suffer any harm.

As a team, we had anticipated on covering BAME much earlier in the season. However, it's taken some time to find a suitable representative group of guests to discuss the issues involved.
Topics to be discussed
In line with what we have done in previous episodes, we'd like our listeners to get your backstory and your thoughts on the interplay between gambling and culture. This would give us a springboard for a discussion around several BAME issues.
When & How
The release date for the BAME episode: Thursday 2nd July. We would ideally record on Tuesday 30th June at 6PM GMT - but we can be flexible.
We record over Skype.
The episode would be approximately 1 hour long - however, we'd be happy to accommodate via a shorter segment. Anything around 10 – 15 minutes is highly plausible.
Contact us by DM or [by e-mail](mailto:[email protected]) for further discussion in the strictest of confidence.

About me
My name is Kishan Patel and I'm a soon to be 5th Year Medical Student at Imperial College London and an independent researcher of gambling harm. My lived experience of gambling-harm is through my Dad's addiction which I saw him struggle with all my life.
About All Bets Are Off Podcast
Launched in April 2020 the 'All Bets Are Off!' podcast was founded by an awesome foursome made up of three gambling addicts in recovery (Ryan, Chris and Kelly) and myself (Kishan). The podcast is designed for those that are either in recovery or for people that are contemplating joining us. Link to website. Link to episodes.
The motivation behind the BAME episode
Research has reflected that BAME groups are disproportionately affected by gambling harm. And this is extremely concerning.

• According to the most credible prevalence research done in Great Britain, BGPS 2007 and BGPS 2010, BAME groups are almost 5x more likely to suffer the most severe form of harm and 2x more likely to suffer any harm.

As a team, we had anticipated on covering BAME much earlier in the season. However, it's taken some time to find a suitable representative group of guests to discuss the issues involved.
Topics to be discussed
In line with what we have done in previous episodes, we'd like our listeners to get your backstory and your thoughts on the interplay between gambling and culture. This would give us a springboard for a discussion around several BAME issues.
When & How
The release date for the BAME episode: Thursday 2nd July.
EDIT: We would ideally record on Tuesday 30th June at 6PM GMT - but we can be flexible.
We record over Skype.
The episode would be approximately 1 hour long - however, we'd be happy to accommodate via a shorter segment. Anything around 10 – 15 minutes is highly plausible.
Contact us by DM or [by e-mail](mailto:[email protected]) for further discussion in the strictest of confidence.

Do you need help to resolve your gambling addiction?

Gambling Addiction Help

Gambling is one of the most destructive habits in the world. It doesn’t destroy your liver. It won’t give you lung cancer. Even after a real bad run of bad luck. You can be reasonably sure that you won’t be stretchered away, having expired with a mouth full of vomit. No harm done. It’s only money that is the belief.
Experts of addiction point out that problem gamblers are subject to is a mix of messy contributing factors and associative disorders. “We’ve known for a long time that problem gambling is not a standalone issue,” says Dr. Rachel Volberg, President of Gemini Research, which conducts gambling-related studies. “Problem gamblers are likely to have other substance abuse issues, usually alcohol and tobacco. Depression and anxiety are also prevalent among problem gamblers.”
In terms of the gambler’s tendency toward suicide, however, these factors serve only to cloud the issue. The most reliable killer of people with gambling problems can be summed up in a single word: debt. Because once negative equity enters the picture, gambling addiction moves into a category of its own.

Gambling addiction therapy

There is now plenty of research that shows more scientific evidence for hypnotherapy than any other complementary therapy by using hypnosis. Enough studies have now accumulated to suggest that the inclusion of hypnotic procedures may be beneficial in the management and treatment of a wide range of conditions and problems encountered in the practice of medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Patients using Hypnosis, Twice As Likely To Remain Free After Two Years Guided health imagery for smoking cessation and long-term abstinence. Wynd, CA. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 2001; 37:3, pages 245-250.
Hypnosis More Effective Than Drug Interventions Cessation Ohio State University, College of Nursing, Columbus, OH 43210, 2003 USA Descriptive outcomes of the American Lung Association of Ohio hypnotherapy smoking cessation program. Ahijevych K, Yerardi R, Nedilsky N.

Gambling addiction counselling

Hypnotherapy Most Effective Says Largest Study Ever: 3 Times as Effective as Patch and 15 Times as Effective as Willpower. Hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up addiction, according to the largest ever scientific comparison of ways of breaking the habit. University of Iowa, Journal of Applied Psychology, How One in Five Give Up Smoking. October 1992. (Also- republished New Scientist, October 10, 2013.)

• Significantly More Addicts Quit with Hypnosis. 9 4% Remained Narcotic Free A comparative study of hypnotherapy and psychotherapy in the treatment of methadone addicts. Manganiello AJ, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 1999; 26(4): 273-9.
• A 77 Percent Success Rate for Drug Addiction Intensive Therapy with Hypnosis: Utilizing Hypnosis in the Treatment of Substance Abuse Disorders. Potter, Greg, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Jul 2004.
• Raised Self-esteem & Serenity. Lowered Impulsivity and Anger American Journal of Clinical Hypnotherapy (a publication of the American Psychological Association) 2004 Apr;46(4):281-97

Research has shown that hypnotherapy can resolve panic and anxiety attacks, anger and stress effectively. It is also be used to help in dealing with things like substance abuse, stop smoking, gambling addiction and weight loss. While under hypnosis, a person with a panic disorder may be guided to bring attention to coping with specific symptoms and overcoming limiting behaviours.

How We Can Help You

At Wise Blue Owl Therapy Centre therapists, Alan Piper and Kate Hudson-Hall both have over 20 years’ experience of working with clients with addiction problems.
We have found that the most beneficial therapies to free our clients of addictions are, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, neuro linguistic programming (NLP), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
By addressing all the areas of your life connected to your anxiety. Reprogramming your conscious and subconscious mind to change these behaviours, reducing your addiction completely. For you finally to live your life permanently free from your past addiction and negative thoughts and feelings.
For more information or to book an appointment
Online therapy also available
https://wiseblueowl.co.uk/

Source: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
IM: We are now in a position where we can choose the level of suffering in the entire living world, why do it?
DP: Around 850,000 or so people worldwide take their own lives each year. Tens of millions self-harm. Hundreds of millions are chronically depressed. These grim figures are just the tip of an iceberg of misery. Words and statistics can’t begin to convey the awfulness of suffering. Yet there is hope. For the first time in history, biotechnology turns the level of suffering in the living world into an adjustable parameter. The biosphere is programmable. Even a handful of genetic tweaks could massively reduce the level of suffering in the world. If used wisely, a combination of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and synthetic gene drives could eradicate experience below “hedonic zero” altogether. Life on Earth deserves a more civilised signalling system – a motivational architecture based entirely on information-sensitive gradients of well-being. Today, a few fortunate genetic outliers enjoy hints of how such an architecture of mind will function. In future, life based on gradients of intelligent bliss can be the global norm. CRISPR makes paradise-engineering technically feasible.
On a more sober note, the easiest way to reduce to reduce suffering in the world doesn’t rely on gene editing, advanced technology or posthuman superintelligence. The biggest source of severe and readily avoidable suffering today is animal agriculture. Factory-farming is inherently abusive. Factory-farms and slaughterhouses are morally indefensible. Our victims are as sentient as small children, and they should be treated accordingly. The death-factories must be permanently closed and outlawed. Any civilisation worthy of the name will be invitrotarian or vegan.
IM: Isn’t suffering a necessary part of life?
DP: Misery and malaise are so common that it’s easy to believe they are integral to life itself. Gautama Buddha’s “Life is suffering” sounds like a simplistic slogan to temperamentally optimistic life-lovers; but for billions of human and nonhuman animals, it’s true. For over 540 million years, suffering has been endemic to the animal kingdom. A predisposition to mental and physical pain has been genetically adaptive. Discontent promotes the inclusive fitness of our genes. Evolution via natural selection is underpinned by random mutations and the genetic casino of sexual reproduction. Natural selection is “blind” and amoral. But a revolution in genome-editing promises to transform the nature of selection pressure. Parents will shortly be able genetically to choose the pain thresholds, hedonic range and hedonic set-points of their future children. Prospective parents will pick genes and allelic combinations in anticipation of the likely effects of their choices. As the reproductive revolution unfolds, selection pressure in favour of “happy” genes will intensify at the expense of their nastier cousins. Barring revolutionary breakthroughs, growth in subjective wellbeing may only be linear rather than exponential; but genetic engineering plus the pleasure principle are a potent mix.
IM: If we do raise the hedonic range, do we lose other values/attributes worth keeping?
DP: Engineering a world of indiscriminate bliss wouldn’t merely be risky. Uniform bliss would undermine human relationships, social responsibility, personal growth and intellectual progress. Most people aren’t classical utilitarians: getting “blissed out” would entail losing a lot of what we value as well as the miseries we hate. By contrast, ratcheting up hedonic range and hedonic set-points doesn’t entail adjudicating between different secular and religious values or sacrificing anything we hold dear. Hedonic recalibration doesn’t subvert existing preference architectures. An elevated hedonic set-point can also enhance the diversity of experience; compare how depressives tend to get “stuck in a rut”. Information-sensitive gradients of well-being can preserve what humans find valuable while enriching our default quality of life. Hedonic uplift will vanquish the feelings of emptiness, futility and nihilistic despair that stain so many lives today. Post-Darwinian life based on gradients of bliss will be saturated with meaning, purpose and significance.
For sure, there are tons of complications. The biohappiness revolution will be messy. We’d do well to preserve the functional analogues of depressive realism. But the basic point stands.
IM: How is genetic engineering different from eugenics?
DP: Just as the Soviet experiment polluted the whole language of social justice, likewise the early twentieth-century eugenics movement polluted the whole language of genetic health. Consider the commitment to the well-being of all sentience enshrined in the Transhumanist Declaration (1998, 2009), or the World Health Organisation’s definition of health as set out in its founding constitution (1948): “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Lifelong health as so defined is impossible with a Darwinian genome. A living world where all sentient beings are innately healthy can be created only via genetic engineering. Societal reform on its own can’t manufacture the molecular substrates of happiness. Etymologically speaking, transhuman civilisation will be the product of eugenics. So in that sense, the critics are right. But genetically engineering the well-being of all sentience is far removed from the coercive “eugenics” and race hygiene policy of the Third Reich.
That said, a multitude of legal of legal and ethical safeguards will be essential to navigate the transition to post-Darwinian life – humans are untrustworthy creatures. Not least, we should uphold and extend the sanctity of life.
IM: How do we ensure genetic engineering is used safely?
DP: All genetic experimentation is inherently risky, not least the gamble of having children. Antinatalists might support a hundred-year moratorium on untested genetic experiments; but such prudence is unrealistic. For evolutionary reasons, most people are determined to have children via sexual reproduction. So we should focus on minimising the risks of such genetic experimentation. Let’s try to balance risk-reward ratios. Preimplantation genetic screening will be hugely cost-effective. Later this century, all babies could and should be CRISPR babies. In the meantime, access to preimplantation genetic screening and counselling ought to be universal.
For example, consider the genetic dial-settings that regulate pain-sensitivity. What level of pain tolerance is optimal for our future children – and our older selves? Even now, medical science could eradicate pain altogether simply by knocking out the SCN9A gene – the so-called “volume knob” for pain. However, instant eradication of pain is too hazardous. SCN9A-knockouts would lack not just the ghastly experience of pain but also the vital function of nociception. Children with congenital analgesia need to lead a cotton-wool existence or else they come to serious harm. For now, choosing benign “low pain” alleles for our offspring is much safer. In tomorrow’s world of advanced AI and neuroprostheses, even the mildest “raw feels” of pain could be abolished. In the meantime, we can ensure that new children (and maybe our future selves) have the same exceptionally high pain-tolerance of today’s high-functioning genetic outliers: folk who say things like “Pain is just a useful signalling mechanism.”
IM: Should we still pursue genetic engineering if there was peace on earth?
DP: Suicide rates typically go down in wartime. There isn’t peace on Earth for the same reason there isn’t peace among chimpanzee troops. Nature “designed” human male primates to (be genetically predisposed to) wage territorial wars of aggression against other coalitions of male primates. Let’s assume, optimistically, that we can prevent future armed conflict without any of the biological-genetic interventions discussed here. The negative-feedback mechanisms of the hedonic treadmill would ensure that countless people would continue to suffer – even in a peaceful world without war, poverty and disease. By its very nature, Darwinian life is sentient malware. Only a biohappiness revolution can fix our sinister source code for good.
IM: What other types of human enhancement technologies will considerably affect the nature of humans?
DP: Safe and sustainable analogues of empathetic euphoriants like “hug drug” MDMA will revolutionise human relationships. Compare the quasi-psychopathic indifference to most other sentient beings that humans display now.
Robolovers, sexbots and designer aphrodisiacs will revolutionise sexual experience.
Novel psychedelics, novel genes and novel neurons will open up billions of state-spaces of consciousness as different from each other as waking life is different from dreaming life.
“Augmented” reality will be followed by full-blown multimodal immersive virtual reality.
“Narrow” superintelligence-on-a-neurochip will be accessible to all; with digital intelligence implants, sentient beings can do everything machine intelligence can do and more.
Opt-out cryonics, opt-in cryothanasia, and finally tools to defeat the biology of aging altogether will transform our conception of life and death. Transhumans will be quasi-immortal.
But in my view, mastery of the pleasure-pain axis will inaugurate the biggest revolution of all. The end of suffering promises an ethical watershed. Invincible well-being for all sentience will mark a momentous evolutionary transition in the development of life.
IM: What are some ethical considerations worth arguing about at this stage?
DP: As a transhumanist, I look forward to a glorious “triple S” civilisation of Superhappiness, Superlongevity and Superintelligence. But more concretely, I’d like to see a coordinated hundred-year Plan to overcome suffering throughout the living world under the auspices of the World Health Organization. Here are four policy proposals for a Biohappiness Revolution:

• Accelerate the development and commercialisation of cultured meat. Close and outlaw factory-farms and slaughterhouses. Rehabilitate the surviving victims.
  
• Genetically raise pain-tolerance. Genetically recalibrate the hedonic treadmill. Create life based on gradients of intelligent bliss.
  
• Offer CRISPR gene-therapy and preimplantation genetic screening and counselling to all prospective parents.
  
• Spread low-pain “happy genes” across the biosphere with CRISPR-based synthetic gene drives that cheat the “laws” of Mendelian inheritance.
  

At times, Darwinian life can be desperately grim. Yet depressive, pain-ridden people shouldn’t feel their lives are worthless. Even malaise-ridden lives can be valuable if one prevents more suffering than one undergoes. We should all aspire to be not just transhumanists but also effective altruists. Let’s use biotechnology to phase out suffering. Humans are stepping-stones to something better – something inconceivably sublime.
IM: In 2015, Bill Gates gave a chilling warning on a TED Talk that the world was in danger due to global pandemics or bioterrorism. These predictions have raised conspiracy theories that Bill is responsible for creating the novel coronavirus and the reason for his interest in developing a vaccine treatment. There are also conspiracy theories circulating about 5G technology being connected to the spread of the novel coronavirus which has led to the recent burning of 5G towers in the UK. Conversations about the use of microchips and biometrics in order to prevent future epidemics are also fueling conspiracy paranoia. Are these fears reasonable? Do they serve an evolutionary purpose or detriment?
DP: “Only the paranoid survive”, said Intel boss Andy Grove. There’s a lot that medical science still doesn’t understand about the pandemic viral respiratory illness COVID-19. However, the new corona virus was not created by Bill Gates, nor is it spread by 5G towers. Nor is it a bioweapon. The truth is more sinister. COVID-19 is a by-product of humanity’s monstrous treatment of nonhuman animals. Zoonotic disease and consequent global pandemics are inevitable as long as humans practise meat-eating. Animal abuse is catastrophic for humans and our victims. Details of the spillover infection in a dirty Wuhan meat market in November 2019 are still murky; but this viral pandemic would not have happened if humans didn’t practise animal agriculture – and then butcher sentient beings to gratify a gruesome taste for their flesh. Rather than being the villain of the piece, Bill Gates is a sponsor of “clean” cultured meat. The cultured meat revolution promises to end zoonotic pandemics, save billions of nonhuman and human animal lives, and yield cost-savings of tens of trillions of dollars by preventing future pandemics. Yet human health and safety needn’t wait for the commercialisation of cruelty-free cultured meat and animal products. Wet markets, vivisection labs, factory-farms and slaughterhouses are crimes against sentience; they should be outlawed. Future civilisation will be vegan.
IM: Humanity’s self-sabotaging nature exists in many forms. One, in particular, a form of self-assertion by denying, ignoring, or attacking what others consider to be true - the fear of others - is as subtle and universal as it is destructive. This form of self-defense mechanism so prevalent in modern society prevents people from establishing effective communication channels that are all-encompassing, flexible, and effective, in particular towards problem-solving. Could humans ever turn mindfulness, gratitude, hope, and a sense of solidarity into sustainable practices?
DP: Evolution didn’t “design” humans to be nice to each other – except insofar as friendliness promoted the inclusive fitness of their genes. Some transhumanists worry about the spectre of unfriendly artificial general intelligence; but our biggest challenge is creating sentience-friendly biological intelligence. Maybe the shock of COVID-19 will help persuade killer apes to close the death factories and accelerate an anti-speciesist revolution. Maybe the shock of COVID-19 will help persuade free-market fundamentalists that all people have a fundamental right to basic income, homes and healthcare. I’d love to believe that humans will “turn mindfulness, gratitude, hope and a sense of solidarity into sustainable practices”, as you suggest. But unless we combine dietary, political and socio-economic reform with remediation of our sinister source code, the well-being of all sentience remains a utopian dream. Depravity is hardwired into our DNA – a lot of it, at any rate. The worst of “human nature” must be genetically cured.
IM:To establish a global pandemic immunity for the novel coronavirus, our priorities are: 1. to keep people safe from getting the coronavirus through social distancing, 2. to figure out a way to contact-trace and test millions of people a day to know who can resume working, 3. to come up with treatments and vaccinations that can prevent coronavirus flare-ups, in particular third world countries, 4. to continue travel restrictions and global collaboration, 5. to improve our supply chain and infrastructure. Do you think this plan is aligned with the transhumanist goal of improving the human condition?
DP: Becoming transhuman will entail overcoming deeply-rooted ethnocentric and anthropocentric bias. COVID-19 has already triggered an upsurge in racism and xenophobia. Coronaviruses and future pathogens could be readily tamed with the aid of ubiquitous testing and tracking apps. But many people are (rightly) afraid that tracking measures introduced to tackle catastrophes like COVID-19 – biometric scanning, phone location data, credit-card information, security footage and so forth – will be used by authoritarian regimes to control rather than protect us.
IM: The success of a global plan to turn the economy around towards the sustainable implementation of a universal health care system that can successfully handle crisis depends not only on improving our own neural architecture but on re-defining our value system. Professor Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, also a distinguished philosopher of posthuman studies from Cabo University, Italy, whom I'm also interviewing in this issue of Immoralists Magazine (See: “The Future Of Digital Surveillance and Healthcare - A Conversation with World Leading Philosopher Stefan Lorenz Sorgner” APR-MAY 2020), makes a bold argument stating that when it comes to health and privacy, the problem isn’t about giving up privacy, but our understanding of what privacy means to us. He argues that people aren’t afraid of giving up privacy, but being sanctioned by the government. We soon realize that the fear isn’t the loss of privacy but the inability to live as one pleases. Stefan believes that the collection of digital data by means of total surveillance is needed and can be established through mutually beneficial contracts where citizens give access to their biometrics to governments in exchange for a free health care system that keeps everyone safe and healthy. He adds, "in order to collect all the relevant data, the data needs to be sold in between the companies or the companies and the government." Do you think that a decentralized, non-commercial, peer-to-peer system would be more effective, or could we instead establish a hybrid system that restricts government and companies access to people's biometrics?
DP: Let’s step back for a moment. Why exactly does privacy matter? The Borg has no concept of privacy. Many Christians believe that a benevolent and omniscient God is privy to their innermost thoughts and feelings. But we needn’t invoke science-fiction or theology. If mutually “loved up” on oxytocin-releasing euphoriant empathogens like MDMA (Ecstasy), people can forget about privacy and be honest with each other: oxytocin has been dubbed the “trust hormone”. More radically, the conjoined craniopagus twins Krista and Tatiana Hogan share a thalamic bridge. In a sense, they are distinct persons. But Krista and Tatiana can partially see though each other’s eyes and taste and feel what the other is experiencing. So in another sense, the twins can share a mind as well as a body. Maybe our transhuman successors will be able to “mind meld” via reversible thalamic bridges. If so, mind-melding technologies will inaugurate a revolution of true honesty – and (lack of) personal privacy – as understood by archaic Darwinian lifeforms. Science, morality and decision-theoretic rationality will be revolutionised too. By contrast, “normal” humans today are profoundly ignorant of each other. Moreover, most prefer to stay ignorant – and prefer others stay ignorant of them. For sure, humans want to feel loved, appreciated and respected. But we also want to prevent others from truly understanding us – as distinct from acknowledging our idealised public personae. Some of the reasons why contemporary humans want to preserve their privacy may be irrational – for example, embarrassment over bodies and their functions or a taste in porn. But the problem goes deeper. Social, personal and business life depends on a web of deceptions. If our dark, Darwinian minds practised “radical honesty”, then human society and personal relationships would collapse. Today, we have the justified suspicion that if other humans learned our secrets, they might exploit such knowledge to harm us.
Anyhow, to answer your question more directly: if adequate safeguards can be established, then everyone’s mental and physical health would be best served by allowing medical authorities to have full genetic and biometric data for all citizens, ideally from birth if not conception. Later this century, universal access to preimplantation genetic screening and counselling and CRISPR genome-editing should be available for all prospective parents. Centralised genetic knowledge-banks available to medical researchers would promote public health and benefit individuals and society alike.
However, the risks to personal freedom from sharing such knowledge are far-reaching. I will need to study Stefan Sorgner’s proposals properly before offering comment. But in my view, universal access to free healthcare, basic income and adequate housing shouldn’t depend on surrendering genetic privacy and other biometric details. Universal and unconditional access to healthcare, basic income and adequate housing is a precondition of any civilised society. One possible solution to the privacy dilemma may involve artificial intelligence. If implemented wisely, the practice of sharing intimate personal and biometric details with smart digital zombies won’t involve embarrassment or scope for human-style abuse. We’re already heading for a world of robo-carers, robo-nurses, robo-doctors and robo-surgeons: insentient robo-epidemiologists aren’t so different – not a Nanny State, but “Nanny AI”. But I believe this kind of AI option would need rolling out over decades. The devil is in the details.
IM: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are planning to partner up with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to begin exploring possible COVID-19 treatments. It is known that the Zuckerberg-Chan Initiative is also on a mission to “eliminate all diseases within our children’s lifetime”. How are super longevity initiatives relevant to our quest to establish a universal health care system and happiness?
DP: Humanity needs a more ambitious conception of health – the kind of conception laid out in the founding constitution of the World Health Organization. I hope that we can indeed “eliminate all diseases within our children’s lifetime”. Yet even if all recognised genetic disorders and infections were eradicated, horrific suffering would persist in the world – all sorts of physical and mental pain. Under a regime of natural selection, a predisposition to suffering and discontent is genetically adaptive. So we wouldn’t really be healthy, just not sick. Our genomes need fixing. Hence the need for a biohappiness revolution – a civilised information-signalling system underpinned by gradients of intelligent bliss. Superlongevity? Only revolutionary medical breakthroughs can abolish death and aging. We don’t yet have the knowledge. Organs and bodies can be replaced, repaired and/or enhanced indefinitely with recognisable extensions of existing technologies; but the central nervous system is more challenging to re-engineer: I’m more pessimistic than some of my transhumanist colleagues about credible time-scales for eternally youthful mind-brains. Therefore we need a twin-track approach: SENS and Calico should work together with Alcor. Universal access to cryonics and cryothanasia could potentially make a transhumanist civilization available to all sentient beings – even the elderly and infirm for whom talk of posthuman paradise is apt to sound personally irrelevant. Hormonally, I’m one of Nature’s pessimists; but I think we are destined for a glorious “triple S” civilisation of superlongevity, superintelligence and superhappiness.
IM: How does transhumanism address issues of racism and injustice?
DP: The Transhumanist Declaration (1998, 2009) affirms our commitment to the well-being of all sentience.
This goal sounds impossibly utopian. Consider just one form of injustice, economic inequality. Traditional routes to a fairer world involve “winners” and “losers”. Zero-sum games are endemic to human society. Worse, the enforcement mechanisms of greater fairness often turn out to be as bad - or worse - than the injustices they attempt to remedy. Consider the fate of socialist experiments of twentieth-century history.
Transhuman society will be different. Information-based technology promises to erase traditional left-right distinctions by creating effectively unlimited abundance of anything that can be digitised – and that embraces almost everything. (Some transhumanists claim that everything can be digitised, but let’s postpone discussion of whether conscious minds are a classical phenomenon.) Digital information is egalitarian. Intellectual-property owners may blanch, but we can now take for granted that everyone can enjoy access to the world’s musical resources, electronic games, movies and computer software. This unfolding revolution will continue into an era of augmented reality and immersive VR. Most importantly, access to genetic information and mastery of our reward circuitry will soon be democratised. Code for the biological substrates of subjective well-being doesn’t need to be rationed any more than the source code of digital music needs to be rationed. We could all become hedonic trillionaires. Many of the world’s worst inequalities aren’t economic or socio-political, but biological-genetic: disparities of mood, motivation and hedonic range. Just consider who is better off: a rich, angst-ridden depressive or a poor, healthy hyperthymic? Transhumanism promises a civilisation based entirely on gradients of intelligent bliss. Potentially, everyone can be a hedonic “winner”.
Yet what about tackling injustice now?
In my view, universal basic income (UBI), decent housing and free healthcare shouldn’t be a political left-right issue, but a precondition of civilised society. Thus broadly libertarian transhumanists such as Zoltan Istvan support UBI no less than transhumanists in the left-liberal tradition. My own gut instincts have always favoured the underdog. But the neocortex is a more effective tool of cognition than the enteric nervous system. Rich and poor, black and white, human and nonhuman animals – we are all victims of our legacy wetware. Everyone will benefit when our Darwinian source code is fixed. Any prospective parent who believes that creating new life is ethically permissible should consider preimplantation genetic screening, counselling and (soon-to-be) professional gene-editing.
Defeating racism? This really demands a treatise, but here goes. From antiquity to the present, dominant groups have convinced themselves they are intellectually, morally and spiritually superior to stigmatised outsiders – and touted “objective” measures to prove it. The evolutionary roots of racial discrimination, bigotry and xenophobia run deep. Everything from cultural stereotypes to the institutional racism in our criminal justice systems and even transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (i.e. transmission of epigenetic information through the germline) mean that the effects of systemic racism will take generations to overcome. Our posthuman successors may find the differences between human ethnic groups akin to the differences that humans discern between different dogs or mice or beetles. Yes, there are differences between different breeds of dog and mouse – and beetle! But humans can recognise that these differences are trivial compared to what all dogs, mice and beetles have in common. Likewise posthuman superintelligence vis-à-vis archaic humans. Education harnessed to intelligence-amplification can help overcome racist prejudice and other cognitive deficits of perspective-taking ability. But creating empathetic superintelligence will be a monumental challenge.
IM: How can transhumanism positively affect policies that affect all sentient life?
DP: A “triple S” civilisation of superintelligence, superlongevity and superhappiness can benefit all sentient beings.
Everyone could benefit from “narrow” superintelligence on a neurochip; Neuralink is just a foretaste of tomorrow’s implantable brain-machine interfaces. Some doomsters fear a zombie coup from runaway software-based AGI; but all the benefits of “narrow” AGI can be incorporated within one’s own CNS. So transhumans will be supersapient and supersentient. Full-spectrum superintelligence will be us, not some fanciful zombie overlord. Transhumanism also offers a richer conception of intelligence than the narrow, “autistic” component of general intelligence measured by simple-minded IQ tests: enhanced social cognition, superior co-operative problem-solving skills, an expanding circle of compassion, and the tools to explore alien state-spaces of consciousness.
Yet who will live long enough to enjoy triple-S civilisation? Unless you’re a hydra, you and your loved ones suffer from the lethal hereditary disease we call “aging”. Rejuvenating interventions such as regular therapeutic blood exchange can potentially turn back the biological clock. “Cyborgisation” and synthetic body parts will increasingly enhance, repair and replace biological organs. But full-blown body-replacement is still decades away. Therefore we need not just medico-genetic advances, but also a medico-legal revolution: opt-out cryonics and opt-in cryothanasia for life-loving oldsters. At its best, transhumanism is all-inclusive.
Critically, the biohappiness revolution won’t be race- or species-specific. Transhumanists aspire to transcend ethnocentric and anthropocentric bias. Everyone can potentially benefit from genetically programmed well-being – a civilised signalling system to replace the dismal dial-settings of a Darwinian hedonic treadmill. There is a crying need for the World Health Organization to live up to its obligations as set out in its founding constitution. Good health should be the birthright of all sentient beings – or else they shouldn’t have been conceived in the first place. I’m personally gloomy about timescales for the abolitionist project. Centuries? Millennia? I don’t know. However, a hundred-year blueprint to eradicate suffering is technically feasible. The world’s last experience below hedonic zero will mark a major evolutionary transition in the development of life on Earth.
My own focus is the plight of nonhuman animals – humble minds as sentient and sapient as small children and worthy of equivalent care. Currently, the abuse of nonhumans by humans is systematic. Factory-farming and slaughterhouses are nastier than even the most virulent racism and child abuse. Ideally, moral argument alone would suffice: I’d implore everyone to adopt a cruelty-free vegan lifestyle. But transhumanists are hard-headed. We tend to favour technical solutions to ethical problems. Cultured meat and cultured animal products once belonged to science fiction. Yet over the next few decades, the cultured meat revolution will end the horrors of animal agriculture. The death factories will close. The surviving victims will be rehabilitated. Zoonotic plagues like COVID-19 spawned by animal abuse like will pass into history. And looking further ahead, what Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus called “the great slaughterhouse of Nature” can be civilised too. The biohappiness revolution can be extended to the rest of the living world via genome editing, cross-species fertility-regulation and synthetic gene drives. The entire tree of life is programmable. For sure, pilot studies in self-contained mini-biospheres will be prudent. But post-Darwinian ecosystems won’t resemble today’s snuff movie. Post-Darwinian ecosystems will be engines of bliss.
IM: What approach would you recommend for someone that intends to recalibrate their hedonic set-point and live "better than well" in a sustainable way in the current technological paradigm, before the democratization of gene-editing arrives, assuming that all the typical healthy habits (sleep, nutrition, exercise, meaningful social interactions) have been already maxed out?
DP: Most people today have not “maxed out” their genetic potential. Optimising sleep, nutrition and exercise is more often preached than practised. Yet what about depressive people who done everything right and still aren’t happy? Maybe they have also tried nutritional supplements (omega-3 fatty acids, S-Adenosyl-L-Methionine (SAMe), St John’s wort, etc) and worked their way through the officially sanctioned mood-brighteners – “antidepressants” such as the SRRIs, MAOIs, tricyclics, bupropion and so forth. Meditation, cognitive-behavioural therapy and other non-biological interventions hasn’t produced lasting relief. Nothing works. The set-point of their hedonic treadmill is too simply low.
It’s tragic. I’ve no easy answers to the hardest cases. One of the biggest challenges to pharmacological (as distinct from genetic) remediation and enhancement is that the neurotransmitter system most directly involved in hedonic tone is the opioid system. We are all born dysfunctional opioid addicts with cravings to fix. Alas, exogenous opioids have well-known pitfalls for users, their families and society at large. That said, there is still scope for creative psychopharmacology. For example, the “French” antidepressant tianeptine - a full mu and delta opioid receptor agonist – can be combined with a selective kappa opioid receptor antagonist. (Kappa agonists induce dysphoria.) Also, perhaps add the novel agent LIH383. LIH383 blocks the atypical “scavenger” opioid receptor ACKR3. Blockade of ACKR3 increases the availability of opioid peptides that can bind to classical CNS opioid receptors, thereby increasing their “natural” mood-brightening action. The negative-feedback mechanisms of the hedonic treadmill can be sabotaged. However, this kind of cocktail of creative psychopharmacology is best explored with the aid of a medical specialist. If all else fails, the modern equivalent of “wireheading” would work. Intracranial self-stimulation is not the transhumanist vision of paradise engineering: superintelligent life based on information-sensitive gradients of bliss. Wireheading is clearly a last resort. But no one should be forced to suffer: it’s unethical.Fortunately, future sentience will be blissful.

1. Profile of Amy Finkelstein.
   
2. 1/3 test positive in a semi-random Chelsea, Mass. sample. And “Notably, 43.2% (95% CI 32.2-54.7%) of the confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections detected across the two surveys were asymptomatic.” That is from northern Italy. and a further critique of the Santa Clara study.
   
3. Droplet more significant transmission than aerosol?
   
4. Sounds of the Bodleian.
   
5. “According to the Navy, the classroom antics had a darker side.”
   
6. The new Magnus Carlsen tournament. And new @pmarca book recommendations.
   
7. NYT survey piece on heterogeneities.
   
8. Good and extensive west coast Kaiser data set, and further evidence that R doesn’t fall nearly as much as you might wish for. If you are advocating an extended lockdown, you really need to think this one through and present your reasoning. So far I don’t see enough people doing that, nothing close, including the economists maybe even especially the economists. Right now this is one of the biggest deficiencies in the debate.
   
9. Countries that have banned alcohol as part of their Covid-19 response. It is striking to me how accepting the American coastal intelligentsia is of a strict lockdown, yet a permanent ban on alcohol is to them an unacceptable idea, curtailing basic liberties and impractical.
   
10. “…stay-at-home orders caused people to stay at home: county-level measures of mobility declined by between 9% and 13% by the day after the stay-at-home order went into effect.” And: “We show that COVID-19 as a whole reduced consumer spending in a panel of over 1 million small businesses by 40% year-over-year. Conversely, COVID-19 did not affect aggregate consumer spending at 3,600 large businesses.3…Consumer spending at the brick-and mortar stores of large firms fell by 9%, but online transactions at these large firms increased by 56%.”
    
11. All this debt during a global recession is in fact dangerous.
    
12. William Hanage and Helen Jenkins at WaPo cover the IHME model with some seriousness. Good piece, but we should have been debating this six weeks ago or more.
    
13. Andrew Gelman on the Santa Clara study (brutal).
    

The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

The English word potato comes from Spanish patata (the name used in Spain). The Royal Spanish Academy says the Spanish word is a hybrid of the Taíno batata ('sweet potato') and the Quechua papa ('potato').[13][14] The name originally referred to the sweet potato although the two plants are not closely related. The 16th-century English herbalist John Gerard referred to sweet potatoes as common potatoes, and used the terms bastard potatoes and Virginia potatoes for the species we now call potato.[15] In many of the chronicles detailing agriculture and plants, no distinction is made between the two.[16] Potatoes are occasionally referred to as Irish potatoes or white potatoes in the United States, to distinguish them from sweet potatoes.[15]
The name spud for a small potato comes from the digging of soil (or a hole) prior to the planting of potatoes. The word has an unknown origin and was originally (c. 1440) used as a term for a short knife or dagger, probably related to the Latin spad- a word root meaning "sword"; compare Spanish espada, English "spade", and spadroon. It subsequently transferred over to a variety of digging tools. Around 1845, the name transferred to the tuber itself, the first record of this usage being in New Zealand English.[17] The origin of the word spud has erroneously been attributed to an 18th-century activist group dedicated to keeping the potato out of Britain, calling itself The Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet (S.P.U.D.). It was Mario Pei's 1949 The Story of Language that can be blamed for the word's false origin. Pei writes, "the potato, for its part, was in disrepute some centuries ago. Some Englishmen who did not fancy potatoes formed a Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet. The initials of the main words in this title gave rise to spud." Like most other pre-20th century acronymic origins, this is false, and there is no evidence that a Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet ever existed.
Characteristics
Potato plants are herbaceous perennials that grow about 60 cm (24 in) high, depending on variety, with the leaves dying back after flowering, fruiting and tuber formation. They bear white, pink, red, blue, or purple flowers with yellow stamens. In general, the tubers of varieties with white flowers have white skins, while those of varieties with colored flowers tend to have pinkish skins.[19] Potatoes are mostly cross-pollinated by insects such as bumblebees, which carry pollen from other potato plants, though a substantial amount of self-fertilizing occurs as well. Tubers form in response to decreasing day length, although this tendency has been minimized in commercial varieties.[20]
After flowering, potato plants produce small green fruits that resemble green cherry tomatoes, each containing about 300 seeds. Like all parts of the plant except the tubers, the fruit contain the toxic alkaloid solanine and are therefore unsuitable for consumption. All new potato varieties are grown from seeds, also called "true potato seed", "TPS" or "botanical seed" to distinguish it from seed tubers. New varieties grown from seed can be propagated vegetatively by planting tubers, pieces of tubers cut to include at least one or two eyes, or cuttings, a practice used in greenhouses for the production of healthy seed tubers. Plants propagated from tubers are clones of the parent, whereas those propagated from seed produce a range of different varieties.
Genetics
There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide. Three thousand of them are found in the Andes alone, mainly in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia. They belong to eight or nine species, depending on the taxonomic school. Apart from the 5,000 cultivated varieties, there are about 200 wild species and subspecies, many of which can be cross-bred with cultivated varieties. Cross-breeding has been done repeatedly to transfer resistances to certain pests and diseases from the gene pool of wild species to the gene pool of cultivated potato species. Genetically modified varieties have met public resistance in the United States and in the European Union.[21][22]
The major species grown worldwide is Solanum tuberosum (a tetraploid with 48 chromosomes), and modern varieties of this species are the most widely cultivated. There are also four diploid species (with 24 chromosomes): S. stenotomum, S. phureja, S. goniocalyx, and S. ajanhuiri. There are two triploid species (with 36 chromosomes): S. chaucha and S. juzepczukii. There is one pentaploid cultivated species (with 60 chromosomes): S. curtilobum. There are two major subspecies of Solanum tuberosum: andigena, or Andean; and tuberosum, or Chilean.[23] The Andean potato is adapted to the short-day conditions prevalent in the mountainous equatorial and tropical regions where it originated; the Chilean potato, however, native to the Chiloé Archipelago, is adapted to the long-day conditions prevalent in the higher latitude region of southern Chile.[24]
The International Potato Center, based in Lima, Peru, holds an ISO-accredited collection of potato germplasm.[25] The international Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium announced in 2009 that they had achieved a draft sequence of the potato genome.[26] The potato genome contains 12 chromosomes and 860 million base pairs, making it a medium-sized plant genome.[27] More than 99 percent of all current varieties) of potatoes currently grown are direct descendants of a subspecies that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile.[28] Nonetheless, genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species affirms that all potato subspecies derive from a single origin) in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme Northwestern Bolivia (from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex).[5][6][7] The wild Crop Wild Relatives Prebreeding project encourages the use of wild relatives in breeding programs. Enriching and preserving the gene bank collection to make potatoes adaptive to diverse environmental conditions is seen as a pressing issue due to climate change.[29]
Most modern potatoes grown in North America arrived through European settlement and not independently from the South American sources, although at least one wild potato species, Solanum fendleri, naturally ranges from Peru into Texas, where it is used in breeding for resistance to a nematode species that attacks cultivated potatoes. A secondary center of genetic variability of the potato is Mexico, where important wild species that have been used extensively in modern breeding are found, such as the hexaploid Solanum demissum, as a source of resistance to the devastating late blight disease.[30] Another relative native to this region, Solanum bulbocastanum, has been used to genetically engineer the potato to resist potato blight.[31]
Potatoes yield abundantly with little effort, and adapt readily to diverse climates as long as the climate is cool and moist enough for the plants to gather sufficient water from the soil to form the starchy tubers. Potatoes do not keep very well in storage and are vulnerable to moulds that feed on the stored tubers and quickly turn them rotten, whereas crops such as grain can be stored for several years with a low risk of rot. The food energy yield of potatoes – about 9.2 million calories per acre (95 gigajoules per hectare) – is higher than that of maize (7.5 million), rice (7.4 million), wheat (3 million), or soybean (2.8 million).[32]
Varieties
There are close to 4,000 varieties of potato including common commercial varieties, each of which has specific agricultural or culinary attributes.[33] Around 80 varieties are commercially available in the UK.[34] In general, varieties are categorized into a few main groups based on common characteristics, such as russet potatoes (rough brown skin), red potatoes, white potatoes, yellow potatoes (also called Yukon potatoes) and purple potatoes.
For culinary purposes, varieties are often differentiated by their waxiness: floury or mealy baking potatoes have more starch (20–22%) than waxy boiling potatoes (16–18%). The distinction may also arise from variation in the comparative ratio of two different potato starch compounds: amylose and amylopectin. Amylose, a long-chain molecule, diffuses from the starch granule when cooked in water, and lends itself to dishes where the potato is mashed. Varieties that contain a slightly higher amylopectin content, which is a highly branched molecule, help the potato retain its shape after being boiled in water.[35] Potatoes that are good for making potato chips or potato crisps are sometimes called "chipping potatoes", which means they meet the basic requirements of similar varietal characteristics, being firm, fairly clean, and fairly well-shaped.[36]
The European Cultivated Potato Database (ECPD) is an online collaborative database of potato variety descriptions that is updated and maintained by the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency within the framework of the European Cooperative Programme for Crop Genetic Resources Networks (ECP/GR)—which is run by the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI).[37]

Pigmentation

Dozens of potato cultivars have been selectively bred specifically for their skin or, more commonly, flesh color, including gold, red, and blue varieties[38] that contain varying amounts of phytochemicals, including carotenoids for gold/yellow or polyphenols for red or blue cultivars.[39] Carotenoid compounds include provitamin A alpha-carotene and beta-carotene, which are converted to the essential nutrient, vitamin A, during digestion. Anthocyanins mainly responsible for red or blue pigmentation in potato cultivars do not have nutritional significance, but are used for visual variety and consumer appeal.[40] Recently, as of 2010, potatoes have also been bioengineered specifically for these pigmentation traits.[41]

Genetically engineered potatoes

Genetic research has produced several genetically modified varieties. 'New Leaf', owned by Monsanto Company, incorporates genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, which confers resistance to the Colorado potato beetle; 'New Leaf Plus' and 'New Leaf Y', approved by US regulatory agencies during the 1990s, also include resistance to viruses. McDonald's, Burger King, Frito-Lay, and Procter & Gamble announced they would not use genetically modified potatoes, and Monsanto published its intent to discontinue the line in March 2001.[42]
Waxy potato varieties produce two main kinds of potato starch, amylose and amylopectin, the latter of which is most industrially useful. BASF developed the Amflora potato, which was modified to express antisense RNA to inactivate the gene for granule bound starch synthase, an enzyme which catalyzes the formation of amylose.[43] Amflora potatoes therefore produce starch consisting almost entirely of amylopectin, and are thus more useful for the starch industry. In 2010, the European Commission cleared the way for 'Amflora' to be grown in the European Union for industrial purposes only—not for food. Nevertheless, under EU rules, individual countries have the right to decide whether they will allow this potato to be grown on their territory. Commercial planting of 'Amflora' was expected in the Czech Republic and Germany in the spring of 2010, and Sweden and the Netherlands in subsequent years.[44] Another GM potato variety developed by BASF is 'Fortuna' which was made resistant to late blight by adding two resistance genes, blb1 and blb2, which originate from the Mexican wild potato Solanum bulbocastanum.[45][46] In October 2011 BASF requested cultivation and marketing approval as a feed and food from the EFSA. In 2012, GMO development in Europe was stopped by BASF.[47][48]
In November 2014, the USDA approved a genetically modified potato developed by J.R. Simplot Company, which contains genetic modifications that prevent bruising and produce less acrylamide when fried than conventional potatoes; the modifications do not cause new proteins to be made, but rather prevent proteins from being made via RNA interference.[49][50][51]

History

The potato was first domesticated in the region of modern-day southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia[5] between 8000 and 5000 BC.[6] It has since spread around the world and become a staple crop in many countries.
The earliest archaeologically verified potato tuber remains have been found at the coastal site of Ancon) (central Peru), dating to 2500 BC.[52][53] The most widely cultivated variety, Solanum tuberosum tuberosum, is indigenous to the Chiloé Archipelago, and has been cultivated by the local indigenous people since before the Spanish conquest.[24][54]
According to conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato was responsible for a quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900.[55] In the Altiplano, potatoes provided the principal energy source for the Inca civilization, its predecessors, and its Spanish successor. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century, part of the Columbian exchange. The staple was subsequently conveyed by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world. The potato was slow to be adopted by European farmers, but soon enough it became an important food staple and field crop that played a major role in the European 19th century population boom.[7] However, lack of genetic diversity, due to the very limited number of varieties initially introduced, left the crop vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight, caused by the fungus-like oomycete Phytophthora infestans, spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western Ireland as well as parts of the Scottish Highlands, resulting in the crop failures that led to the Great Irish Famine.[30] Thousands of varieties still persist in the Andes however, where over 100 cultivars might be found in a single valley, and a dozen or more might be maintained by a single agricultural household.[56]
Production
In 2018, world production of potatoes was 368 million tonnes, led by China with 27% of the total (table). Other major producers were India, Russia, Ukraine and the United States. It remains an essential crop in Europe (especially northern and eastern Europe), where per capita production is still the highest in the world, but the most rapid expansion over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia.[8][57]

Nutrition

A raw potato is 79% water, 17% carbohydrates (88% is starch), 2% protein, and contains negligible fat (see table). In an amount measuring 100 grams (3.5 oz), raw potato provides 322 kilojoules (77 kilocalories) of energy and is a rich source of vitamin B6 and vitamin C (23% and 24% of the Daily Value, respectively), with no other vitamins or minerals in significant amount (see table). The potato is rarely eaten raw because raw potato starch is poorly digested by humans.[58] When a potato is baked, its contents of vitamin B6 and vitamin C decline notably, while there is little significant change in the amount of other nutrients.[59]
Potatoes are often broadly classified as having a high glycemic index (GI) and so are often excluded from the diets of individuals trying to follow a low-GI diet. The GI of potatoes can vary considerably depending on the cultivar or cultivar category (such as "red", russet, "white", or King Edward), growing conditions and storage, preparation methods (by cooking method, whether it is eaten hot or cold, whether it is mashed or cubed or consumed whole), and accompanying foods consumed (especially the addition of various high-fat or high-protein toppings).[60] In particular, consuming reheated or cooled potatoes that were previously cooked may yield a lower GI effect.[60]
In the UK, potatoes are not considered by the National Health Service (NHS) as counting or contributing towards the recommended daily five portions of fruit and vegetables, the 5-A-Day program.[61]

Comparison to other staple foods

This table shows the nutrient content of potatoes next to other major staple foods, each one measured in its respective raw state, even though staple foods are not commonly eaten raw and are usually sprouted or cooked before eating. In sprouted and cooked form, the relative nutritional and anti-nutritional contents of each of these grains (or other foods) may be different from the values in this table. Each nutrient (every row) has the highest number highlighted to show the staple food with the greatest amount in a 100-gram raw portion.
Toxicity
Potatoes contain toxic compounds known as glycoalkaloids, of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine. Solanine is found in other plants in the same family, Solanaceae, which includes such plants as deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) and tobacco (Nicotiana spp.), as well as the food plants eggplant and tomato. These compounds, which protect the potato plant from its predators, are generally concentrated in its leaves, flowers, sprouts, and fruits (in contrast to the tubers).[63] In a summary of several studies, the glycoalkaloid content was highest in the flowers and sprouts and lowest in the tuber flesh. (The glycoalkaloid content was, in order from highest to lowest: flowers, sprouts, leaves, skin[clarification needed], roots, berries, peel [skin plus outer cortex of tuber flesh], stems, and tuber flesh).[11]
Exposure to light, physical damage, and age increase glycoalkaloid content within the tuber.[12] Cooking at high temperatures—over 170 °C (338 °F)—partly destroys these compounds. The concentration of glycoalkaloids in wild potatoes is sufficient to produce toxic effects in humans. Glycoalkaloid poisoning may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps, and, in severe cases, coma and death. However, poisoning from cultivated potato varieties is very rare. Light exposure causes greening from chlorophyll synthesis, giving a visual clue as to which areas of the tuber may have become more toxic. However, this does not provide a definitive guide, as greening and glycoalkaloid accumulation can occur independently of each other.
Different potato varieties contain different levels of glycoalkaloids. The Lenape) variety was released in 1967 but was withdrawn in 1970 as it contained high levels of glycoalkaloids.[64] Since then, breeders developing new varieties test for this, and sometimes have to discard an otherwise promising cultivar. Breeders try to keep glycoalkaloid levels below 200 mg/kg (200 ppmw). However, when these commercial varieties turn green, they can still approach solanine concentrations of 1000 mg/kg (1000 ppmw). In normal potatoes, analysis has shown solanine levels may be as little as 3.5% of the breeders' maximum, with 7–187 mg/kg being found.[65] While a normal potato tuber has 12–20 mg/kg of glycoalkaloid content, a green potato tuber contains 250–280 mg/kg and its skin has 1500–2200 mg/kg.

In the last 24 hours there has been lots of headlines that follow this kind of structure: “Fifa packs and loot boxes 'not gambling' in UK”
 
The reception by the gaming community has been very negative:

• People are saying that loot boxes clearly are gambling.
  
• People are saying the UK gambling commission has been paid off to say loot boxes aren't gambling.
  
• People are saying they should be regulated nonetheless
  

 
Example 1 - Reddit, Example 2 - Twitter
 
It seems like a lot of unnecessary controversy on a topic which I think is actually coming down on the side of game consumers.
 
 
Most of these stories in the last few months have been a result of the DCMS Parliamentary enquiry into 'immersive and addictive technologies'. Basically UK's Parliament are asking tough questions of the gaming industry. It's been pretty excellent.
Being brief at the cost of being overly reductionist, these are some things that done gone and happened:
 

Academics

• Evidence has been given by a bunch of leading academics; such as this session with Dr Kuss, Dr Zendle, and Dr Bowden-Jones. They stated that a shockingly small amount of independent research assessing loot boxes has taken place - only 7 studies at the time of the session.
  
• In the 4 of these studies which were conducted by Dr Zendel, they found a correlational link between loot box spending and problem gambling.
  
• Similar mechanics that are used in gambling are clearly prevalent in loot boxes.
  

"If you look at how loot boxes are designed, they seem to have many features in their designs that very closely mirror very effective ways, from the gambling industry, to take money off people." - Dr David Zendle

 

Gaming Representatives

• One of these DCMS sessions was the origin of the infamous 'not loot boxes, surprise mechanics' ridiculousness.
  
• When questioned regarding ethics EA's rep repeatedly stated she had no ethical qualms surrounding their implementation of loot boxes --sorry, surprise mechanics-- in FIFA.
  
• This overly defensive posture regarding loot boxes from many reps has lead to frustration from the MPs conducting the questioning. Q1432 & Q1433 from this session are a real treat but slightly too long to paste here.
  

 

Gambling Commision

• Are invested in the debate. One of their concerns when simply defining loot boxes as gambling is that they may inadvertently overstep their remit and potentially target other safe, enjoyable mechanics.

"Just to pick up a last point, we understand the concern and share many of those concerns, but our proposition would be that in addressing that, you have to be really clear what the harm is that you are trying to address and work out what the appropriate mechanism is. If that turns out that defining it as gambling is the right mechanism, we would stand ready to do that, but you can foresee that there would be unintended consequences potentially if those definitions are drawn very wide. To give you a real example of that, in the past when we have been trying to establish the extent of our remit, you can see how a combination of an element of chance, payment and a reward might catch things like pub quiz machines. I don’t think that was intended as the sort of gambling machine that the Gambling Act was intended to regulate, but we understand the point and we worry about it quite a lot." - Neil McArthur

 

Summary

1. Academics say loot boxes potentially pose a serious risk and need to be further investigated.
   
2. MPs investigating appear to agree and are doing a great job of asking the right questions.
   
3. Gambling commission say they agree it needs to be further investigated but are hesitant to define loot boxes as gambling until then.
   

To fellow gamers: Be patient, it seems to be going well. To news media: you can do better, you should do better.  
 
TLDR: DCMS committee good, EA bad
 
 

1. Do you think loot boxes are predatory mechanics and should they be regulated?
2. How would you go about regulating loot boxes?
3. Are there other problems with gaming - specifically monetisation methods or irresponsible design - that you wish got the same amount of attention as loot boxes?

 
I am not an authority on this topic, I'm just a future cyberpsychology student that has been following the inquiry quite closely.

In 1989, the Jewish screenwriter and journalist Frederic Raphael was invited to deliver the 25th Anniversary Lecture at the University of Southampton’s Parkes Institute for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations. Founded by Rev Dr James Parkes (1896–1981), a neurotic Church of England minister who made a career out of the promotion of philo-Semitism in Christianity and the promotion of guilt narratives among Christians (in 1935 he was both celebrated by Jews and targeted for assassination by National Socialists), the Institute quickly became a hub for the production of scholarly-appearing pro-Jewish propaganda. Rather than offering objective analyses of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, the Institute furthered the familiar narrative that Jews were the blameless and catastrophic victims of an entirely irrational European hatred. Raphael, given the honor of addressing the 25th anniversary of this project, opted on the appointed evening to be a witty gadfly, choosing “The Necessity of Anti-Semitism” as the title of his address. It could be the title of a book, said Raphael, one that could sit in the Parkes Institute library but for the fact it had never been written, and did not exist.
In the meandering speech that followed, Raphael explored the putative contents of this imaginary book, suggesting its potential arguments, and what they might say about the author and about European culture. Confirming the opinions of everyone present, Raphael offered the assurance that although this ghostly and ghastly book did not exist, such a haunting product would not be out of place on a continent where anti-Semitism is “a constant and essential working part of Europe’s somber and unreformed logic.”[1] For Raphael and his smug audience, “The Necessity of Anti-Semitism” lay only in its utility in salving the pathological European mind. Anti-Semitism was in fact extremely illogical and, in a moral sense, completely unnecessary.
Since reading Raphael’s speech several years ago, The Necessity of Anti-Semitism has, in a sense, haunted me too. As a single book, of course, it does not exist. But it perhaps has existed, after a fashion, in the thousands of tracts, pamphlets and books on the Jewish Question that have been written by Europeans over many centuries. In this collected body of anti-Semitic apologetics, one finds The Necessity of Anti-Semitism inflected in varying religious, political, and social hues. But what would the book look like if it was in fact written today? How could any author distill the various aspects of the Jewish Question into a single volume? In the essay that follows, part literary experiment, part historiography, I want us to join Raphael in imagining that this spectral book exists, even if our approach is rather different.
I imagine our author to introduce his volume with the broad case for The Necessity of Anti-Semitism, namely the presence of Jews and their influence in the four primary cultures of White decline: the Culture of Critique, the Culture of Tolerance, the Culture of Sterility, and the Culture of Usury.
The Culture of Critique
The section titled ‘Culture of Critique’ is a both a nod to the work of Kevin MacDonald, and an expansion upon the same. Setting out this section, our author might recall the notorious remark of the Jewish historian Louis Namier (1888–1960) when asked why he did not deal with Jewish history: “The Jews do not have a history, they have a martyrology.” It is this martyrology that lies at the heart of the Culture of Critique. Whereas almost every nation possesses a history that is in most respects objective, the Jews alone possess a mere quasi-history, riddled with mythic and esoteric self-deceptions that give psychological permission for the most clannish and subversive of social behaviors and the most hostile of attitudes towards other peoples. The Culture of Critique, a kind of cultural revenge inspired by the Jewish martyrology, is the clearest expression of the corrosive nature of the disastrous Jewish/non-Jewish relations so mourned by the woefully misguided Rev James Parkes.
In the Jewish mind, the corrosive nature of their interactions with European peoples has always taken on a heroic aspect. The ruse is played out, for themselves and us, that in these interactions we see a unique and virtuous questioning by ‘insiders/outsiders’ uniquely and helpfully placed to show Western culture its own flaws. Jews believe themselves to possess special talents in this respect, and maybe in a perverse sense they do, but in any case, in their great charade they break us down to “benefit” us. David Dresser and Lester Friedman, Jewish scholars of the media, maintain the position that Jewish filmmakers have a unique, untainted objectivity because of their Jewishness. They write that “Jewish artists’ marginality allows them a vantage point denied other, more culturally absorbed, creative thinkers.”[2] This compares remarkably well with a writer in the Times of Israel who, commenting on the activities of the Jewish politician Alan Shatter in destroying the legal supports of the family in Ireland, has argued that Shatter’s Jewishness “appeared to put him at an advantage, freeing him from the baggage that weighed on his Catholic counterparts.” Just like the Frankfurt School, these cultural heroes know us better than we know ourselves, which allows them to help us see that we are irrational and evil, bigoted and in need of Jewish redemption. We are constantly and warmly assured by our Jewish helpers that this process is undertaken for the West’s own good. They free us from our “baggage.”
In truth, this process is undertaken for our destruction. The Critique, having no coherent objectives beyond the will to decay, never ends. It never ceases the search for novel and unsullied corners of Western culture to drag through the mud. The ‘Rabbi’s Speech’ from Hermann Goedsche’s Biarritz (1868) is a work of fiction, but it drew on a multitude of facts and instincts. In the Jewish cemetery of Prague, Goedsche’s Rabbi addresses a secret nocturnal meeting of thirteen Jewish elders, promising they shall “extirpate all belief and faith in everything that our enemies the Christians have venerated up to the present and, using the allurements of the passions as our weapon, we shall declare open war on everything that people respect and venerate.”
The direction here is accurate, but Goedsche didn’t get everything right. There are no clandestine midnight meetings, no gatherings of Elders of Zion, but instead a shared instinct defending shared interests in a spirit of bitterness and, in reality, the Culture of Critique is not a declaration of open war, but the pursuance of war disguised as friendship, as medicine, as liberation. Boas tore down Western cultural confidence while claiming to set Westerners free from the errors and burdens of chauvinism. Freud perverted everything that was sacred about sex and marriage, and called it a cure. Marx called on the workers of the world to unite, and unite them he did — in the lines for food, in the gulags, and in the mass graves of a starved Ukraine. War has been noisily and bloodily waged, but it has been only silently and subversively declared.
And still they wage it, even if they’ve already toppled “everything that people respect and venerate.” The churches are infiltrated, vanquished, mocked and disdained. The history of Christianity has been put through the Jewish intellectual meat grinder, and emerges today only as a tale of persecutions and slavery. It is a shell, co-opted for endless tolerance. Even discounting religion, no notable Western historical figure has survived the Culture of Critique. And when our uniquely insightful Jewish helpers tired of toppling reputations, they used their ethnic proxies to start toppling statues, removing names, and burning portraits. No aspect of Western culture was to be left standing. Its science, philosophy and moral systems were mocked, derided, and savaged, with every sonnet, concerto, and technological innovation leading obscurely but somehow definitely to a World War II camp in Poland where to this day, we are earnestly told, no birds sing.
Except that I’ve visited what remains of this camp, and the birds do sing. There is no magic there. Time does not stand still. The children, forced to be there by their schools, laugh and scrawl graffiti on old bunks and doors, while adults, clearly worried that someone is watching them, do their best to appear solemn and moved rather than cold and bored.
Our author might concur, pointing out in The Necessity of Anti-Semitism that this particular camp is the jewel in the crown of the Jewish martyrology, and perhaps even the engine of the most advanced form of the Culture of Critique. Almost 55 years after it was written, Jerzy Kosiński’s The Painted Bird is now back in the news. It’s a memoir about his experiences around this same notorious wartime Polish camp, and it is replete with child-rape, bestiality, and pornographic depictions of violence including the feeding of a man’s eyes to pet cats. It’s also a long-exposed fraud, a fanciful pastiche of Kosiński’s own psychosexual fantasies. This hasn’t stopped it recently being made into a film that is being roundly applauded by critics, nor has the fact it has induced viewers to vomit, faint, and remove themselves from movie theaters. Perhaps, in the age of the Culture of Critique, many Whites have learned to love being told how evil they are towards Jews, taking each condemnation like a dose of welcome medicine. Joanna Siedlecka, a journalist and author of writers’ biographies, studied the life of Kosiński and concluded “[The Painted Bird] has nothing to do with Kosiński’s real childhood; he invented those horrors, while he himself experienced only good, while the villagers took the risk to hide his whole family. (…) Kosiński is still treated as a victim, even though we now know a lot more about his biography. We know Poles didn’t torment him.”
Our author might point out in The Necessity of Anti-Semitism that the example of Kosiński and the Poles is wholly commensurate to the historical relationship between Jews and Europeans. A biographer of these two peoples can attempt to show the reality of the situation, but the Jew “is still treated as a victim.” And this “victim” elevates himself to the position of moral arbiter and arch critic. Armed with their very own sadomasochistic historical pastiche, Jewish activists direct the Critique into action for what one assumes to be a Racial Endgame. They deny this, of course, and call it a wicked conspiracy theory. But in reality, they are like the proverbial Irishman who denies he stole the bucket, adding the indignant criticism that it had a hole in it anyway. The Jews vigorously deny any role in the decline of Western culture, adding indignantly that Western culture is rotten, sick, racist, bigoted, and irrational anyway. Their denial is a form of admission. This is the essence of the Culture of Critique.
The Culture of Tolerance
This section might open with the remark that the Culture of Tolerance is itself a child of the Culture of Critique. When did Jews first start calling for Whites to abolish themselves in their own lands? Our author might argue that they began right at the first Jewish entry into European culture — not European lands, but European culture. Isn’t it Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) who is often held up as the first “assimilated” Jew, the first real Jewish intellectual who wanted to be ‘part of German culture’ and who advocated for “tolerance”? Well, what did Mendelssohn, the first “German of the Jewish faith,” actually ask Europeans to do? That much is clear, and a matter of historical record. He impudently and impatiently asked, “For how long, for how many millennia, must this distinction between the owners of the land and the stranger continue? Would it not be better for mankind and culture to obliterate this distinction?”[3] [emphasis added].
And there we have it — the very first Jewish intrusion into Western culture was accompanied by a call for the obliteration of borders and the migration and settlement rights of “the stranger.”
From the very beginning of Jewish activism in Western culture, it was in the interest of Jews to undermine the position of the owners of the land and to promote “tolerance.” It was Mendelssohn’s 1781 work, On the Civil Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews, that is said to have played a significant part in the rise of “tolerance” in Western culture. But tolerance, despite all the glowing propaganda, is a curious word. Place it in a medical context, and tolerance means “the immunological state marked by unresponsiveness to a specific toxin or other foreign substance which induces an immune response in the body, especially the production of antibodies.”
And isn’t this exactly what Mendelssohn prescribed almost two and half centuries ago— that the owners of the land should be “unresponsive,” suppressing all natural “immune responses” even in the face of intruding toxins? We have to ask ourselves how tolerance ever became regarded as a virtue. The answer is that it became a virtue in the context of the Jewish intrusion into Western culture.
The Culture of Tolerance is now more than two centuries old. It matured slowly, but there can be little doubt that it has now come of age. Kevin MacDonald’s work has conclusively demonstrated that Jewish groups organized, funded and performed most of the work aimed at combating America’s 1924 immigration law, toppling it finally in 1965. Brenton Sanderson has shown that Jewish intellectual movements and ethno-political activism were pivotal in ending the White Australia policy — a policy change opposed by the vast majority of the Australian population. I have written on how Jews were conspicuous in the dramatic changes in Britain’s citizenship, race, and speech laws from the 1950s to the 1980s. A Jewish Minister for Justice transformed Ireland’s citizenship process, opening the country up to Africans and Pakistanis. Today, Jews dominate the mass migration NGO scene, demonstrably holding executive roles at the International Rescue Committee, International Refugee Assistance Project, the Immigrant’s Rights division of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Immigration Justice Center, Equal Justice Works, The Immigrant Defense Project, National Immigration Law Center, Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, Northwest Immigrants Rights Project, the Asylum Advocacy Project, Refugee Council USA, the New York Civil Liberties Union, American Immigration Council, The Immigrant Learning Center, the Open Avenues Foundation, the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project, Central American Legal Assistance, Halifax Refugee Clinic, and the UK Refugee Law Initiative. The migration policy advisor for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is not a Catholic, but a Jewish woman.
Third World mass migration into Europe and the West is a Jewish project. It has been curated by Jews, promoted by Jews, explained and excused by Jews. It is driven by a Jewish need, as old as Mendelssohn’s tract and perhaps older, to dispossess the owners of the land and open up that land to the stranger in the name of tolerance.
Much like the Culture of Critique, Jews offer us the Culture of Tolerance in the guise of friendship. With broad grins and mellifluous tones, they assure us that we are doomed if we don’t obliterate “the distinction between owners of the land and the stranger.” After all, haven’t we been helpfully informed that our own culture is worthless, bigoted, illusory, tainted, and morally bankrupt? Why not import an array of new, vibrant cultures? That way we can experience a more exciting life and, what’s more, it would go some way to proving ourselves morally acceptable to our Jewish friends, the innocent martyrs of humanity. And we should listen to them primarily because their advice makes perfect sense. After all, we need unemployable Africans to fund our pensions, Islamic terrorists to care for our ageing populations, and millions more people in our countries in order to solve our housing crises. We need floods of cheap labor to increase our wages. We need poorly trained foreign sex criminals to staff our hospitals, perform our surgeries, and nurse us back to health. We need to tolerate the burqa to demonstrate how profoundly feminist we’ve become as a society. We need to express our patriotism by denying we exist as a people. We need more speech-gagging laws to ensure freedom. And, most importantly of all, we need to become a less racist society by eliminating Whites everywhere.
Our helpful friends deliver these messages to us in a number of ways. When they are feeling generous, they simply bombard us with screen garbage, portraying multiculturalism on film in a manner entirely divergent from the way it plays out in reality. Jewish cinematic magic is a form of cultural alchemy. Take Black crime and low academic achievement, dip it in Hollywood, and muggers and rapists are transformed into educated Black “love interests” fawned over by nubile blondes. Or, take the stability and tranquility of the White middle-class family, dip it in Hollywood, and what now emerges is a claustrophobic den of neuroticism, control and bigotry.
When our Jewish friends are feeling less generous, they force their way into your child’s school curriculum, and when they are angered they remove your right to free speech and imprison you. On the other hand, if you try to impede Jewish particularism by, for example, banning one of their tribal rites such as circumcision, the lesson of the ADL’s threats to the sovereign nation of Iceland shows that blackmail, slander, and unrelenting economic warfare are equally deployable tools in their armory. In this example, of course, we’re back to the Irishman and the bucket. The Jews deny they have outsized influence, adding that if you make that accusation again, their little club in New York will bring your entire country to its knees.
While the Culture of Tolerance is in full swing, one lingering problem is that White babies, for now, keep coming. Here our author might begin the third section of his book.
The Culture of Sterility
Jews are everywhere in the Culture of Sterility, an appropriate term for what the world’s leading scholars have described as the “rapid increase” in “levels of childlessness in most European countries.”[4] Our author could start with the fact the oral contraceptive was invented by the Jew Gregory Goodwin Pincus, but really Jews have everywhere in the West been, to use the Jewish historian Howard Sachar’s own words, “pioneers in the underground contraceptives industry.”[5] By plan, co-ordination, or raw instinct, Jews have accumulated in those areas toxic to the White birth rate — contraception, abortion, divorce laws, and the promotion of pornography, homosexuality, gender confusion, and promiscuity.
The pioneers of abortion clinics, birth control literature for couples, and birth control policy measures in America were, according to one scholar, “Anna Samuelson in the Bronx; Olga Ginzburg and Rachelle Yarros in Chicago; Sarah Marcus in Cleveland; Nadine Kavinoky and Rochelle Seletz in Los Angeles; Esther Cohen and Golda Nobel in Philadelphia; Hannah Stone, Marie Warner, Cheri Appel, Anna Spielgeman, Naomi Yarmolinsky, Bessie Moses in Baltimore, Elizabeth Kleinman in Boston, and Lena Levine in New York, Hannah Seitzwick-Robbins in Trenton, and Lucile Lord-Heinstein in Massachusetts.”[6] All of these women were Jews. Stone was particularly influential, working closely with Sanger and producing key birth control texts like Contraceptive Methods of Choice (1926), Therapeutic Contraception (1928), Contraception and Mental Hygiene (1933), and Birth Control: A Practical Survey (1937).
In the 1920s and 1930s, the primary lawyer for Margaret Sanger, the non-Jewish public face of the pro-abortion and birth-control movement in New York, was the Jew Morris Ernst. And when Sanger decided to move for Federal birth control legislation, she wrote to Rabbi Stephen Wise in 1931 asking him to use Jewish political influence and his own extensive list of political contacts to help make it happen, a request he happily obliged.[7] Of course, Sanger had married a Jew, and according to one biographer “surrounded herself with Jewish colleagues and friends.”[8]
In fact, Jewish influence is so tightly bound up with the origins of abortion in America that historian Daniel K. Williams has characterized the abortion debate of the 1930s as a “religious conflict because nearly all the doctors speaking out against abortion were Catholic while the most vocal proponents of abortion legalization were Jewish.”[9] Williams adds the fact “Reform Jewish rabbis also became early leaders in the abortion law liberalisation movement.”[10] The link between Jewish organizations and the more sordid (and often Jewish-dominated) corners of the medical profession came into stark relief during investigations into illegal abortions in the 1940s and 1950s, when the crossover was such that, according to historian Leslie J. Reagan, local authorities in New York, found “pro-birth control and Jewish organisations of particular interest.”[11] By the time Pincus developed the Pill, he was sufficiently aware of the potential for birth control and Jewish activism to be linked in the popular mind that he deliberately selected John Rock, a Catholic, rather than Abraham Stone and Alan Guttmacher, long-term colleagues and leaders of the birth control movement, to develop a contraceptive regimen in women, in order to avoid “anti-Semitic stigma.”[12]
The same pattern has been repeated in every other Western nation. Alan Shatter may have acted as chief propagandist for birth control legislation in Ireland in the 1970s, but even a century before Shatter’s actions a member of the Irish clergy reported:
There arrived in town a Jew with a lorry [ … ] and he started selling contraceptives made up as pencil holders . … Someone told the parish priest about the traffic . … He notified the police who could do nothing. He then set up a court of his own and tried him and fined him £10. The Jew paid £10 and cleared out.[13]
In New York, Jews like Moses Jacobi and Morris Glattstine were particularly influential and conspicuous in the sale of illicit contraceptives and in the underground abortion scene as early as the 1870s.[14] Similarly, during the late nineteenth century, “Jews were among the leaders of the revolution in birth control in southern Germany.”[15] In interwar Germany, according to scholar Harriet Freidenreich, “Jewish women physicians played a very prominent role in the campaign to legalise abortion. … Jewish women physicians were disproportionately involved in the sex reform movement that promoted more widespread availability of birth control. They were very visible in the dissemination of contraceptive devices.”[16]
In the Polish Second Republic, the central pioneer of sexual education, contraception, the promotion of homosexuality, and abortion was Irena Krzywicka (née Goldberg). As well as founding Liga Reformy Obyczajów (The League to Reform Mores), Krzywicka wrote for the influential journal Wiadomosci literackie (Literary News) where she argued the case for civil unions, easy divorce, easily accessible contraception, female “sexual liberation,” and abortion.[17] In his Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, historian Robert Blobaum points out that the “anti-Semitic press” in Poland made the link between Jews and “the spread of birth control literature” as well as pornography, but is notably shy of discussing Krzywicka’s career or that of her many Jewish colleagues.[18] Ronald Modras notes that even the Polish birth control movement’s non-Jewish leaders stood out for their “philosemitism.”[19]
In France, the main body behind the legalization of contraception and abortion was Choisir (To Choose), founded by the Jewish lawyer Gisèle Halimi, and the relevant legislation was finally passed by the Jewish Minister of Health Simone Veil (born Simone Jacob).[20] In the United States, of course, Roe v. Wade was effectively the product of activism by the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, founded by the Jew Bernard Nathanson. Nathanson worked closely on abortion legislation activism with Jewish feminist Betty Friedan, until he experienced an apparently legitimate crisis of conscience in the late 1970s and subsequently converted to Catholicism. By that date, he had personally performed more than 60,000 abortions, later explaining in an interview: “We fed a line of deceit, of dishonesty, of fabrication of statistics and figures; we coddled, caressed, and stroked the press. … We were calling ourselves pro-abortionists and pro-choice. In fact we were abortifiers: those who like abortion.” And Jews certainly like abortion. According to Pew data, Jews have a higher rate of support for abortion than any other religious group in America. In fact, Jews enjoy limiting the fertility of other populations so much that in 2013 Israel admitted giving birth control to incoming Ethiopian migrants without their consent.
Our author might linger on the subject of birth control and abortion only because the prevalence of Jews in other areas of the Culture of Sterility is now so well-documented. Jewish involvement in early sexology, through influential figures like Albert Moll, Iwan Bloch, Magnus Hirschfeld, Albert Eulenberg, Hermann Joseph Lowenstein, Julius Wolf, Max Marcuse, and Eduard Bernstein, was universally concerned with the need for “tolerance” and social pluralism. What they in fact promoted were pathological sexual aberrations, distant from reproduction and toxic to social cohesion. Hirschfeld, probably the originator of “Love is Love” propaganda, had “subverted the notion that romantic love should be orientated toward reproduction,” arguing instead for the acceptance of homosexual lifestyles and hedonistic, non-reproductive, sexual relations in general.[21]
Here it is worth stressing that Jews have not accumulated in the promotion of “tolerance” for homosexuals, gender-benders, abortion-seekers, and transvestites because they genuinely believe in the “rights” or “worth” of these people. Rather, Jews see in these people traits that it wishes to promote in the population at large and recruit them to the Culture of Tolerance. Society never really accepted homosexuality and transgenderism, but rather society itself first became ‘homosexual’ in its traits before it could tolerate actual homosexuals and transgenders. As the West became progressively more childless, promiscuous, hedonistic, and brimming with delusional self-confidence, the differences between the normal and the abnormal narrowed, and there appeared fewer reasons to continue to deny ‘equality.’ Societies with demographic concerns will have harsh penalties for both homosexuality and abortion/infanticide. The West, celebrating both, is in demographic free fall but, ignorant of the profound implications of this racial death, its people are actually in the process of indulging a culture cultivated for their demographic assassination. Homosexuality has never been more tolerated. Abortion has never been easier and less stigmatized. And Whites have never been closer to leaving the stage of history.
Promiscuity has replaced the pushchair. A glance at the modern generation of Whites of child-bearing age is sobering. Rates of sexually transmitted disease in America have never been higher. According to senior physicians, the U.K. is heading for a “sexual health crisis.” The same phenomenon has been reported in Australia, Canada, Ireland, France, and Germany. Meanwhile, the Gatestone Institute reports that: “Abortion has recently assumed epic proportions in countries such as Sweden or France. In France, there are 200,000 abortions a year. To put things in perspective, there are in France around 750,000 births a year. France, therefore, is aborting 20% of its babies/fetuses/embryos/cell clusters — choose according to your personal convictions — each year.” You can be sure it isn’t French Muslims who are aborting their babies by the hundred thousand, and this perhaps explains why they’ve been telling the Archbishop of Strasbourg that “France will be theirs one day.”
In The Population Bomb (1968), the Jewish biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote that the best method to reduce population is the legalization of abortion. That was without considering the effect of birth control or the broader Culture of Sterility that glorifies perverted, empty, childless visions of “love.” When Europeans began to legalize both birth control and abortion 40 years ago, a few years after Roe vs. Wade (1973), the Catholic Church warned of the risk of Europe entering into a “morbid civilization.” This is what we now inhabit.
The Culture of Usury
In a West gone wildly materialistic, it can be difficult to see the extent of Jewish usury. When you mention Jewish moneylenders to most people, the response normally relates to the Middle Ages. But Jewish usury is alive and well in modernity, and entire countries are in debt to Jewish financiers, who then pass on some of their wealth to Jewish organizations dedicated to the promotion of the three other cultures of White decline (Critique, Tolerance, Sterility). Paul Singer, of the Jewish “investment fund” has been described by Bloomberg as “The World’s Most Feared Investor,” but really he’s the world’s most feared exploiter of debt. The Democratic Republic of Congo owes Singer and his Jewish colleagues $90 million, Panama owes him $57 million, Peru owes him $58 million, and Argentina owes him $1.5 billion. When payments have been late, Singer seized and detained the flagship of the Argentinian Navy, and when South Korea put up a fight to prevent him getting control of Samsung, he drove the nation’s President to impeachment and imprisonment.
While these activities may appear very high-level, and distant from the reality of day-to-day life (unless you are a citizen of the Congo and Singer is blackmailing you for payment by withholding essential work on your water supply), Singer and his Jewish financial clique have a hand in almost every purchase you make, and every war your country wages. Singer, his son Gordin, and their colleagues Zion Shohet, Jesse Cohn, Stephen Taub, Elliot Greenberg and Richard Zabel, have a foothold in almost every country, and have a stake in every company you’re likely to be familiar with, from book stores to dollar stores. With the profits of exploitation, they fund the Culture of Sterility, boost Zionist politics, invest millions in security for Jews, and promote wars for Israel. Singer is a Republican, and is on the Board of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He is a former board member of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, has funded neoconservative research groups like the Middle East Media Research Institute and the Center for Security Policy, and is among the largest funders of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was also connected to the pro-Iraq War advocacy group Freedom’s Watch. Another key Singer project was the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group that was founded in 2009 by several high-profile Jewish neoconservative figures to promote militaristic U.S. policies in the Middle East on behalf of Israel and which received its seed money from Singer.
Although Singer was initially anti-Trump, and although Trump once attacked Singer for his pro-immigration politics (“Paul Singer represents amnesty and he represents illegal immigration pouring into the country”), Trump is now essentially funded by three Jews—Singer, Bernard Marcus, and Sheldon Adelson, together accounting for over $250 million in pro-Trump political money. In return, they want war with Iran. Employees of Singer’s firm, Elliott Management, were one of the main sources of funding for the 2014 candidacy of the Senate’s most outspoken Iran hawk, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who urged Trump to conduct a “retaliatory strike” against Iran for purportedly attacking two commercial tankers. These exploitative Jewish financiers have been clear that they expect a war with Iran, and they are lobbying hard and preparing to call in their pound of flesh. As one political commentator put it, “These donors have made their policy preferences on Iran plainly known. They surely expect a return on their investment in Trump’s GOP.” When Adelson and Singer first made overtures to Marco Rubio, Trump tweeted that Rubio would be their “puppet.” Trump has now taken money from the same puppetmasters, but has thus far refused to go “all the way” with their demands, even firing John Bolton, a favorite of the Jewish triad. How the latter will proceed in the face of Trump’s defiance on the matter remains to be seen.
The Intersection of the Culture of Usury and the Culture of Zio-Wars: Paul Singer, Bernard Marcus, and Sheldon Adelson
The Jewish triad behind Trump is a perfect example of the role of Jewish finance and the Culture of Usury in sustaining and advancing Jewish power and influence in contemporary society. Singer embodies usury and vulture capitalism, while Bernard “Home Depot” Marcus is symptomatic of bloated consumerism, and Adelson represents the sordid commercial exploitation of vice (gambling). There is nothing productive in the economic activity of any of these figures, their vast accumulations arising from sociopathic parasitism, ethnic nepotism, and the will to cultural decay.
We feel this decay lower down the scale, since we live in a society of conspicuous consumption, funded by ever-escalating household debt. Everywhere, people buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have. Household debt is rising yet again in the United States. According to the New York Federal Reserve, Americans owe $13.86 trillion in household debt, slightly higher than the total amount right before the 2008 financial crisis. In Australia, the household debt to income ratio is above 190%, among the highest in the developed world. The same situation is seen in the U.K. Jews, of course, were involved disproportionately in the development of department stores, the fashion industry, retailing business, and other aspects of the consumer society.[22] Jews in late nineteenth-century Germany, as they did in several other Western countries, initiated the “consumer revolution,” and “held, or at least started, the overwhelming majority of department stores and clothing and fashion houses throughout the country.”[23] Werner Sombart remarked at the time that department stores were the herald of a new, degenerative economic culture, typified by “the anonymous, objectifying forces of capitalism and marketing.” Contemporary anti-Semites saw these centers of the economic culture as “a consuming temple in two senses, as both a temple of consumption and a temple that consumes — that is, a place of destruction, a Moloch even, that greedily devours vulnerable customers and neighbouring businesses.”[24]
Today, largely worthless “branded” consumer products are overwhelmingly Jewish, are promoted via Jewish dominance of the advertising industry, and their purchase by consumers is funded by Jewish financiers. Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Kenneth Cole, Max Factor, Estée Lauder, and Marc Jacobs are just some of the Jews whose very names have become synonymous with debt-fueled consumer culture and the subscribing to carefully cultivated fashion fads, while Jewish-owned companies like Starbucks, Macy’s, the Gap, American Apparel, Costco, Staples, Home Depot, Ben & Jerry’s, Timberland, Snapple, Häagen-Dazs, Dunkin’ Donuts, Monster Beverages, Mattel, and Toys “R” Us have come to epitomize the endless and superfluous production of garbage for mass consumption on credit.
The consuming temple of debt-fueled consumerism is also linked to the cultures of Critique, Tolerance, and Sterility. So-called anti-racism, support for gender confusion, and the celebration of mass migration and multiculturalism have become mainstays of modern advertising as the Racial Endgame nears its conclusion and the West commences its death rattle.
You might ask what tortilla chips have to do with sodomy, but that’s only because you’re suffering from a tolerance deficiency, and the best way to correct that is to admit White privilege, buy a Starbucks, and go try on a new pair of $200 jeans at Macy’s.
Conclusion
Critique, Tolerance, Sterility and Usury have converged. This is the necessity of anti-Semitism. As much as The Necessity of Anti-Semitism has haunted me, so too has the image of Goedsche’s Rabbi addressing the graveyard meeting of thirteen elders. It haunts me because it appears so antiquated and naive, as if the situation could ever have been so simple. The reality has always been much more profound, and infinitely more dangerous. The Jewish Question, such as it might exist for Jews, has always amounted to “Is it good for the Jews?” For Whites, it should always have been “Are the Jews good for us?” An answer might be found in their accumulation in their four aspects of White decline. Our opposition to this accumulation and its associated activities is perfectly logical, and morally necessary.