On This Modern Warrior Archetype Part Four.2.3 Revisited

2c. Individuals may form groupings for a common objective. Real freedom is the ability to walk away even before completed. Anything meaningful is worth staying to the end; anything else is not worth the effort. The moral high ground gives the better vantage point.


 Graph by Travis B.

On This Modern Warrior Archetype Part Four.2.2 Revisited

2b. Employed skillfully, quickness often proves the surest means to success (at least in the short term). The non-hierarchical are always disadvantaged compared to authoritarian systems with respect to operational speed. However, flexibility will often overcome this deficiency. Unlike those ordered from above, anti-authoritarian drive must come from within both the group and the self. As witnessed, hierarchies are vulnerable.


 Graph by Travis B.

On This Modern Warrior Archetype Part Four.2.1 Revisited

2a. Occasionally, circumstances require cooperation with others. Often similarities will prove the greatest impedance to a successful working relationship. In situations where one's ability obviously make one most suited, little argument regarding superiority is likely. However, when skills are evenly matched, the danger lies wherein a clash of egos and the resulting needless expenditure of energy. In a hierarchical situation, leadership may act as a mediator. In the case of a grouping of individuals, decision making still requires process. Dispute resolution must be quick. How is a matter for and only for those involved.


 Graph by Travis B.

On This Modern Warrior Archetype Part Four.1.0 Revisited

Travis B. took it upon himself to graph a few sections of On This Modern Warrior Archetype. Thanks.

1. A Note–

Ego might be a concept useful as a psychological description, but it is not an absolute. Language can be used to describe the same thing in many different ways. For the purposes of this discussion (and this discussion only), the term will refer to something akin to that which drives so-called "pissing matches." In conflict, it does not really matter that which is inside someone’s skull, only that action is decisive and not reckless. In the absence of a hierarchy, this ability is something that needs to be instilled without the benefit of indoctrination. Cultural strengths and weaknesses are a big factor in contributing to successful conflict resolution or otherwise.

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B.

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Max Nordau explains this self-indulgent vindication pattern in similar terms:

Many mental conditions and operations of which we become conscious are the result of causes which do not reach our consciousness. In this case we fabricate causes a posteriori for them, satisfying our mental need of distinct causality, and we have no trouble in persuading ourselves that we have now truly explained them. The degenerate who shuns action, and is without will-power, has no suspicion that his incapacity for action is a consequence of his inherited deficiency of brain. (p. 20).

The primary argument sustained within the quote above is that man justifies himself even after negative consequences to his actions can be observed. Whereas Nordau aims this criticism at the Fin-De-Siecle this argument can also be aimed at anyone else who is corrupt, indecent, and sociopathic. A lack of moral direction and proper socialization (i.e., upbringing), whether innate or stemming from external factors, results in the same self-indulgent post-hoc reasoning evident in most cases of so-called impending need. When this need affects others and the consequences violate other’s rights and/or interests it does not matter the quality of the post-hoc reasoning behind the behavior. Where activity is argued to be of necessity the lack of activity when morality demands it is still justified in the same post-hoc vein; selfishly.

When the behavior of our political advocates indicates a detachment from the communal need and interest the consequences have been significant. These consequences are difficult to avoid except for cases where the political advocate’s individual past provides examples and thus indication of their moral character. When this moral character is indication of inadequate judgment in then becomes our responsibility to not elect them to office. Although our reasoning stems from the same rational-emotive cycle it has the unique context-stimulus benefit of being anchored in our national history. This national history, despite being selfish as well, has provided us ample evidence of what works for this nation and what does not. When one’s moral character, as presented in verbal argument, is insufficient for evaluating their appropriateness for political office it becomes our responsibility to look to their past to determine their true worth. The responsibility is yours.


 

End for now.

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #9

The response set and the evaluation of the context-stimulus involve two different primary functions. The first is to justify the action (emotional-response) that resulted whereas the second is to justify the evaluation (automatic thought). Unfortunately both are mere reflections of how we are responding to the stimulus. Information pertaining to our evaluation of the stimulus is thus forward delimited by this bias in a self-perpetuating cycle of self-congratulatory and thus indulgent self-vindication.


 

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #8

This argument then also supports the realization that the individual’s perception of the context-stimulus as deeply rooted in their characterological response. This characterological response is indicated by the way, in which the individual copes, rationalizes, and behaviorally responds to the original stimulus. As the characterological response is unique to that individual the perception of good/bad, right/wrong is also unique to that individual. As a result their perceptual evaluation of the original context-stimulus is biased as well. The post-hoc rationalization and attempt at justification create the maintenance of this sequence: the response set and the evaluation of the context-stimulus.


 

Drunk And Armed Is Here

Drunk And Armed is Here.

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #7

The quality of the activity that results from the rational-emotive response set does not justify rule One. The nature of the response and the post-hoc explanation for its justification is inherently unique to the individual. The frame of the context-stimulus is neither determines the resulting rational-emotive response that follows nor can it be used as a post-hoc analysis to justify it. The behavior that follows the rational-emotive response set is not explained by the context-stimulus alone; only in the mind of the individual is the response to the context-stimulus deterministic.

The context-stimulus is capable of producing an infinite set of rational-emotive responses depending on the moral quality of the individual. The so-called character of the individual thus places a primary bias in the individual’s selection of the resulting behavioral set. This bias determines the nature and thus quality of the rational-emotive perception of the stimulus that precedes it. This perception is not naturally determined by the context-stimulus but is determined by the character and thus nature of the individual. This same character thus determines but does not justify the behavioral response that follows.


 

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #6

Three: the logic and/or thought attached to the behavioral sequence does not explicitly indicate nor require that action be taken. Cognitive theory has established that emotional reasoning indicates our reaction to a stimulus. The sequence of context, automatic thought (pre-conscious thought) and emotional response further highlights how the stimuli is being perceived; whether framed in the terms of cognition or emotion. The automatic thought, as a precursor to the emotional reaction, is more an indicator of the human being's propensity to respond to the quality of the perceived stimulus than the rationale and thus cognitive conceptualization of it. This is defined by some in the literature as a “rational-emotive” response set.


 

DRUNK AND ARMED: Coming Soon

The DRUNK AND ARMED Blog will be officially launching soon, but Here's a bonus MP3 from before.

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #5

Two: the logic that parallels the behavior does not indicate the exclusivity of that behavior to that cognition. “To act or not to act, that is the question,” as a premise does not justify the appropriateness of the question or the necessity of the act that results. The nature of the question has been reduced to neurological, biological, behavioral, and cognitive precepts the nature of the question but its NECESSITY is only apparent in neurological and behavioral terms. The compelling drive to act is thus reduced to a neuro-behavioral sequence irrespective of the cognitive-emotive correlates that attend it.

The cognitive correlates merely indicates our attempted rationale response to the phenomena whereas the emotional correlates indicate how we are responding to the question. To put it another way, the cognitive correlate of an action indicates strains of our attempt to attribute meaning to an action that was already impending. The emotional correlate of an action indicates our response to the action prior to it being carried out. The cognition at best attempts to control and harness the already impending action whereas the emotion primarily reacts to it; neither influences the behavior prior to its necessary onset. The emotive and cognitive sequences thus represents responses more so than antecedent deliberations of the action observed.


 

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #4

One: the act does not indicate a conscious deterministic logic to entail it.

Consider how many actions we have ourselves have taken, to be considered compelled by reason. Reason is thus defined, according to this argument, as a self-evaluated and thus self-imposed set of parameters on the following selection of activity. Although this reasoning does explain the individual’s support and thus conceptualization of judgment it neither supports that judgment nor justifies the results. This reason thus exists within a moral vacuum that neither justifies its existence nor explains that person’s perceived right to impinge that said action within the interpersonally affecting sphere of society. Any attempt to justify the conscious reason thus becomes circular and meaningless. The result is the intra-psychic projection of intra-psychic contents, supported by an individual rationale that exists within a moral vacuum.


 

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #3

Behavioral theory espouses that critical conscious thought is not a necessary element in the production of activity. Traditional behavioral theory, in fact, espouses that cognition is an epiphenomena to the behavioral sequence that can be directly observed. This reasoning is based on several fundamental principles: 1) to act does not indicate a deterministic logic to entail it, 2) the logic that parallels the behavior does not indicate the exclusivity of that behavior to that cognition, 3) and the logic and/or thought attached to the behavioral sequence does not explicitly indicate nor require that action be taken. The result is a behavioral theory based on positively or negatively reinforcing stimuli; each quality of stimuli determining the nature of the resulting or preceding activity. It is then the quality of the stimuli that contains these deterministic qualities necessary to extract a behavioral logic of necessary activity.

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #2

The resulting manifest wisdom thus delineates the intra-psychic nature of the individual. Through the individual’s consequent activity the antecedent moral quality of their thought becomes evident. Whether the a-priori argument is that the “ends justify the means” or that the “logic was compelling me to action” the consequence of that logic entails its appropriateness; lack of foresight is not acceptable.


 

An Argument Against “Moral Character” by Travis B. #1

Here's the first installment of exerpts from a manuscript-in-progress by Travis B. Copyright 2006 by the author.

An Argument Against “Moral Character”

Letter to Professor Caesar Lombroso
p.V Degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists. These, however, manifest the same mental characteristics, and for the most part the same somatic features, as the members of the above-mentioned anthropoligical family, who satisfy their unhealthy impulses with the knife of the assassin or the bomb of the dynamitter, instead of with pen and pencil.*
from Nordau, Max Degeneration, (1968) University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Introduction by George L. Mosse


Max Nordau fittingly states that decadence in action is not just ascribable to the time in which the action is taken but is ascribable to the institution from where it is born. The action, as an antecedent to prosperity or decay, thus becomes a medium through which the individual communicates their albeit unintended wisdom. This wisdom, whether functional or completely useless, encapsulates and thus describes that individual’s character, whether or not intended.