Ultimately all Civilizations known to this person are based on coercion of the majority by a minority, in other words, slavery and servitude. In order for such systems to function with the confidence of the functionaries tasked with oppressing many humans for some humans, the concept of invalidation is necessary for this process to be served with clear conscience. Most people are incapable of functioning under stress without approval, that being moral validation of their activity by peers, superiors or even underlings. Therefore when one small group is tasked with draining the souls, bodies and possessions of a larger group away for the enrichment of their masters, they need to believe that those being ruined deserve it. This is the basis for police being schooled in the use of the terms “good guys” and “bad guys” and for their opposites, career criminals, to steep themselves in the mythology that every man is a thief given the opportunity and that there can be no “good” and therefore no “bad.” Both of these toxic worldviews have been constructed to provide a moral framework for people to willingly and repeatedly do unto others as they would never want done unto themselves.

Neither party, the cop or the crook, is capable of seeing his enemy’s worldview as the mirror image of his own, because…

Invalidation is a social method for bypassing empathy.

Invalidation is also a social method for limiting inquiry.

Inquiry came onto the world stage at the hands of Herodotus, the Father of History. His book Histories, translates directly from Greek to English as Inquires. You see, the Greeks had no letter H, but used an accent mark in front of other letters to denote the use of the sound. Ironically, since Herodotus exaggerated the numbers of the Persian host invading Greece with one, even two zeroes added to the total, something like half of modern historians reject every single piece of history and folklore he reported as being false, nothing but fantasy, and name Thucydides as the real father of history. This is a cultic view of history and has to do with fashioning an in-group of right-thinkers and an out-group of wrong-thinkers. A purely rational view would be to consider Herodotus with reservations and do as much fact checking as possible, since he was not nearly the investigator that Thucydides was.

A closer examination will show that both historians practiced objective reporting, showing both sides of the conflicts in light and dark shades and that Herodotus did more travelling in support of his work and had less understanding of the art of war, for he was a writer and Thucydides was a military officer. He was essentially an anthropologist going around collecting stories. Comparing him to Thucydides is like comparing a 19th century folklorist with a 20th century military historian.

To get the most out of your interactions learn to spot a compulsive invalidator.

I came to one town and said to a local, “You know, I heard there was a solid boxing scene here.”

I actually knew this, having spoken with boxers who competed there, knew coaches who coached there, knew of champions who had been trained there. But the local, having rarely even watched a boxing match and knowing zero about the art, immediately said, “There is no more boxing here than anywhere else.”

That was a blind lie, an opposition to a voiced truth made in total ignorance of the facts, as this man knew none of the facts, but used his decades of residency in that town as a gatekeeper of reality and a gaslighter of me, the hated newcomer.

Here is a small thing to determine if you have been inducted into the modern cult of invalidation:

You are in a locker room and see an older man wearing jock strap, an absurd-looking and uncomfortable-looking piece of underwear reminding you of a stripper’s G-string.

Most people will make the leap that the man wearing this thing is weird, or eccentric, because most people are compulsive invalidators.

An athlete or former athlete will assume that this man has an athletic background and 9 times out of 10 they will be correct.

A coach or doctor will assume that this man has or has had a hernia.

Upon first meeting this person, most people will be put off and be unlikely to get the most out of their interaction with this man. However, the athlete might find himself talking to a man who has been where he is headed and be able to learn from one or more of his experiences and the coach or doctor might find a patient or client.

More importantly, the person who will jump to a harmless conclusion such as the man in the jockstrap is just weird [for he may well be weird], is very likely to be in the habit of invalidating himself, of blaming things beyond his control on some shortcoming of his own. Most of us have been cultivated by society as compulsive invalidators, as was I. However, in natural, healthy societies it is the tribe’s task to validate the individual. Conversely, in Modernity –which is that point in civilized devolution that most holdovers from barbarism, such as honor, have fallen away—we have been degraded to a mob of petty judges.

Blaming the target of a violent crime for being attacked is one of the most common manifestations of this process—and it is a process, breaking us down one spirit at a time—and my involvement in The Violence Project is what really brought to my mind how steeped we are in invalidation.

I once had an opportunity to speak with a journalist who is a better writer than me be every measure: better speller, more popular, more acclaimed, more intelligent, better speaker, classically trained, etc. Our conversation, began with me having read his best book and many of his articles and listening to a handful of interviews of him and him having read zero of my work.

I complimented him on numerous points of his work, knowing of what I spoke.

He opened up by talking about how evil all Christians were, hoping to bait me into an argument, but was stunned when I declared myself a heathen, to which he answered that being interested in such writers as Evola, who he has not read by his own admission, marks me as a possible fascist. He then continued by criticizing me for being critical of establishment journalists. The vast majority of journalists traffic in such lies as a man in a headlock died of a choke and a man charging a police officer after beating him up moments earlier was on his knees facing the other way when being shot, yet this journalist, who has rebelled against most such lies, had to remind me that their credentials left them beyond my infantile ability to criticize—that only he, from his snide tower was armed with the validity to question his fellow gods.

There went my chance at learning more from this man, as he had dedicated the initial stage of this conversation to putting me in my place, not because my reduction was important enough to justify his effort, but rather that it was necessary to reduce me to a prop, with the idea of me as an equal partner in the conversation wrecked, my conversational corpse serving as his soapbox, very likely through no bad intent but simply according to long habit. [I have found that many people do not realize when they are compulsively invalidating others] The balance of the hour I mostly listened as he repeated things he had told other people about himself and his work. By complimenting him on real factual accomplishments I had invited his invalidation up front, as the invalidating mind perceives compliments as nothing but creeping cover for character assassination. By coming right out with very reasonable and accurate compliments, I was spared the effort of seeking knowledge only to be fed backhanded insults. I was also spared the feeling of being insulted, as my initial and sincere compliments had triggered his compulsion to invalidate.

So, in a society dedicated to invalidation, when confronted with a powerful ego I lead with a compliment as a probe of intentions. Most will see this as disingenuous, yet I have never found a person who could not honestly be complimented on some aspect of his life, even off the cuff. Some homeless beggars make great signs. Some lifelong criminals have powerful shoulders. The man robbing you might be wearing a well-fitted hat. The woman seeking to ruin your life might be sporting a fine manicure.

Here is another exercise, which has become a small social study since eye seizures have become a plague in Portland and I’ve been walking around at night with sunglasses on, knowing that a single headlight could send me to the gutter vomiting in disgrace.

You see a man wearing sun glasses at night. What is your immediate thought?

-1. He is a serial killer, kidnapper, robber or government agent?

-2. He is an eccentric creep?

-3. No big deal. This makes him less dangerous by impairing his night vision even further, so why concern yourself unless he is following you? Besides, sunglasses at night are not a disguise but a flag that something is wrong with this guy.

-4. He probably has an eye injury or eye condition?

4 is the most common reality.

3 is the most rational and tactical read on the stranger since you are not in a Terminator movie.

I have been mostly ignored [3] with some apparent expressions of 2 [people veering way from me with startled or horrified faces] and 4 [people waiting to hold doors for me]. Now, in Baltimore, walking like this at night would have gotten me beaten and robbed almost immediately, as any sign of weakness or ill health [my balance obviously being bad as the condition makes me dizzy and caused me to sprain my ankle last night] is taken as a cue to attack by its savage denizens. That at least would be an imposition of a brutal reality rather than the inclination of some few Portlanders who seem to expect me to break out an Uzi at any moment and start gunning for Sarah Conner.

If you jump to 1 or 2 than these knee-jerk, low-probability, negative interpretations [or any knee-jerk, low-probability, negative interpretations of a passing human] may be a sign that you have been indoctrinated into civilized life to the point that you are a compulsive functionary of the ZOG delusion and you might want to begin looking at reality instead of the smoke and mirrors your masters use to control you in order to control others through your social compulsions.

Life is a dream.

Then you wake up.