DVS Press

I mentioned school indoctrination

David V Stewart August 8, 2020 August 8, 2020Education, Ethics, Non-fiction, Philosophy 3

If you read the short thread and its replies – especially from teachers – you have another piece of evidence to what I asserted regarding education just being one of many products produced jointly through schools. Just to clarify, “indoctrination” is not necessarily bad or good itself, but is bad or good depending on what is being preached. The real question here is not what, but by whom. The party that is both most interested in the healthy attitudes of the child, is in the best position to judge a child’s needs, and is through the natural order the first…

YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS

David V Stewart August 3, 2020 August 3, 2020Non-fiction 5

Great thread from Alexander, as usual: There’s lots of great responses that I don’t need to repost here. Instead, I’ll give my own take on it. Undoubtedly some of these reasons will repeat what others have said, so if it seems like I’m ripping you off, then forgive me. This take is pretty spot on when you consider that there is a strong transition from the extended period of youth that men have in the west (basically, their late teens and twenties) to the more established “productivity mode” that defines men in their thirties. You go from a state of…

ECONOMIC ARGUMENTS

David V Stewart July 29, 2020 July 30, 2020Economics, Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics 1

The obsession with the material… That’s what the vast majority of “conservative” arguments are these days – appeals to the material. I write this article on a state-of-the-art (from five years ago) computer powering two huge monitors whose inner workings might as well be magic, surrounded by walls full of guitars – and not just any guitars, some of the best ever made. I have a magical electronic drum set a few feet from me, just in case I want to play drums without bothering my neighbors. I live in a huge house in one of the most expensive states…

Schools and COVID

David V Stewart July 21, 2020 July 21, 2020Education, Non-fiction, politics, Uncategorized 5

As the new school year approaches, there are lots of concerns over Coronavirus spreading through schools. While the virus isn’t dangerous to children, it is potentially dangerous to those they might be in contact with, such as grandparents and other relatives with high-risk profiles. This has caused lots of scrambling. How can we continue the current school arrangement when schools are and always have been a giant pathological petri dish? If we abandon the current paradigm of grouping children by age in small boxes, how will they get “socialized”? How will our children learn without school? This pulls the mask…

Why we don’t object to Trump’s “Secret Police”

David V Stewart July 21, 2020 July 21, 2020Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics 6

In standard fashion, the Death Cult is appealing to morality that it itself does not recognize or care about. It does this most potently by co-opting organizations that officially are dedicated to some sense of “morality”: The Libertarian Party has been a clown show for some time, but this tweet really says it all. They were silent when it came to mobs of “anarchists” (really, bandits) destroying swaths of private property and stealing indiscriminately during “protests.” They certainly didn’t call for individuals to use force to defend their property. Instead, they speak up when one organization level of government (federal)…

On Having Coronavirus

David V Stewart July 18, 2020 July 18, 2020Non-fiction 14

Yes, I have/had Coronavirus, which is why I’ve gotten so little done in the last little while. I’m mostly on the mend, but there were definitely some intense days. How I got it My whole family got the virus, we think, around the 4th of July weekend, in which my kids played with their cousins. Their cousins got sick slightly before my son (the first of us), so it’s likely one of them had the virus but hadn’t come down with symptoms. Oddly, one of my sisters-in-law had been exposed, but had a negative test come back. That might have…

The Millennial Obsession with Harry Potter

David V Stewart July 16, 2020 July 16, 2020Analysis, Art, Ethics, Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics, Writing 14

It’s a curious case – Millenials, particularly in the “literary” and “writing” (I use those terms as ironically as possible) community are constantly referencing Harry Potter, particularly when it comes to some of the basic parts of the moral play, such as Lord Voldemort, who represents whatever current-year evil they happen to be personally obsessed with (usually just orange man bad). Why? Why so much obsession with a children’s book series, to the point where people put their Hogwarts house in their twitter bio? Yes, you are so Gryffindor, Miss Keyboard Warrior! Here’s my basic explanation: Mythological vacuum Social reinforcement…

Optimates and the First Order of the Good

David V Stewart July 13, 2020 July 13, 2020Ethics, History, Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics 3

I’ve started using the term “Optimate” instead of political labels like “conservative,” “Libertarian,” “Republican,” etc. I’d like to explain a little about why, and just what “Optimate” means to me. Optimates means “The good men” and the Optimate approach is being “for the good.” It is borrowed from late Roman Republic politics and was a political faction that favored doing the “right” things above doing “popular” things (which gave rise to the “Populares” who favored social, military, and political reform). Why not “Conservative”? We already have this term and have had it for some time to represent politics of the…

The Process of Deplatforming

David V Stewart July 8, 2020 July 8, 2020Analysis, Economics, Ethics, Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics 0

Having been around, carefully observing the process of “deplatforming” (that is, banning) of so-called “right wing” personalities on social media, I’ve noticed a few patterns. I’ve noticed that the platforms, YouTube in particular, operate in a series of steps, with the final collision of banning across all platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) happening last. Let’s take a look: Phase 1: Shadowban In this step, the offender is identified either manually (that is, by a person) or through new elements added to the algorithms and filters, and is essentially cut off from the normal organic boosts that a social media account will…