About my last story, “Hearth breakers”:
When I was growing up in the 1980s, activists1 told me that the Western Bible is sexist where it depicts Eve being formed from Adam’s rib. You see, if a small piece of a man is all it takes to produce an entire woman, then she must be lesser.
Meanwhile, scientists told me that humans came from chimpanzee DNA. You see, if a tiny piece of a chimp is all it takes to evolve the entire human race, then humans must be greater.
Also, the Bible says God made Adam from clay. You see, if a lump of clay is all it takes to produce an entire man… Good thing God didn’t make Eve from a lump of clay.
Alas, the Bible does not give us colorful words like “evolved”2 to describe how Adam came from clay or Eve came from Adam’s rib, so it is up to us to tell ourselves those parts of the story. How shall we choose to see a divine omnipotent being producing something? Shall we choose to see it as an enhancement or a reduction?
Well, when we human mortals produce something, it is normally an enhancement, greater than its ingredients, which is why we choose to produce it.
So it only stands to reason that God the Omnipotent enhanced a rib from Adam’s rack to make Eve. Perhaps it was less effort than starting from scratch with clay. Enhancing Adam’s little rib might produce an Eve just as great as Adam, or it might make her even greater. Why assume it makes her lesser?
Activists deliberately choose to see Eve as lesser, cultivate a sense of outrage, and leverage it for power.
In a different world, they might choose to see Eve as greater, cultivate a sense of supremacy, and leverage it for power. But in this moment of modern Western culture, there is far more power in the outrage. (Supremacy is so 19th-century.)
That is how this world works. And I seem to like writing about it.3
There are plenty of other Biblical passages offering activists a perfectly righteous sense of outrage, so why do they bother gaslighting us with this one?
It’s because they are addicted, and they cannot walk past this smoking bong without taking a hit. That is how this world works. I used to find it—well—OUTRAGEOUS! I am beginning to find it boring. But not too boring to write about.
We are ruled by arbitrary framing
I have pondered “Ribgate” for a long time, and I recently found other themes coalescing around it, so I combined them into a story.
“Hearth breakers” is not a claim about human history4 or a precise analogy about anything. As with most of the writing around here, it is a narrative collision to nourish us with a burst of discernium.
Take a long, deep breath of that discernium. Become addicted, so that you cannot walk past a narrative collision without catching its scent and taking a hit.
Narratives don’t only collide inside the Twadpockle Report. They ram right into each other in real life, all day long, right in front of us. When a nice story is available, but we are being sold a shitty one, ask why. That is,
Why are they selling it, and
Why are we thrilled to buy it?
It’s because we are addicted! We must take a hit from that bong, every time we walk past.
Get addicted to discernium instead. It is actually healthy.
Other themes in “Hearth breakers”
Our robot servants
The term robot was coined in 1920 from the Czech word robota, meaning forced labor.
We can always tell a culture’s robots, because they are bigger and stronger and more durable, for the heavy, nasty jobs. They are designed to be thrown at danger, sacrificially, so that we can stay safe.
There are more refined models too, for the more delicate jobs.
But they are never in charge. They are programmed to serve us.
Attack of the robots
What can we conclude about a culture that resonates loudly with fearful stories of killer AI robots?
We can conclude that they were taken over some time ago by killer AI robots!
Even now, the robots mumble old mantras such as, “ladies first,” and “she’s my better half,” and they still run an ancient command line activated by thigh-high boots and a tone of stern authority.
But obviously those are obsolete. The robots are in charge now.
All the earmarks of authority
It is easy to tell who is in charge of a culture, by examining certain telltale signs.
For example, the following would indicate that men are in charge:
men have longer lifespans,
men perpetuate their power by raising and teaching all the children,
men are entitled to an expensive ring from any would-be bride, who also has to pay a “dowry” for the privilege,
men lead the children to safety while others neutralize the danger,
men are entitled to days of emotional leverage if their mate forgets an anniversary or fails to buy a sufficiently expensive traditional gift on a traditional day,
men spend every day in the place where their mates yearn to be when they have a day off work,
men are exempt from being slaughtered on battlefields, crushed in mine shafts, drowning in underground sewage repairs, and the like.
Obviously, those examples are hypothetical. Imagine a silly world like that!
But you said “Hearth breakers” is not a claim about human history or a precise analogy about anything.
True! I really meant it. It’s really not.
I was going to write a sincere, pedantic explanation here of the narratives colliding in “Hearth breakers.” I was going to hint darkly at the power brokers who sell us these shitty narratives and then exploit us as pawns and human shields, as polarities that generate energy when kept separated and pointed at each other.
But instead I got another whiff of discernium mingling with the fumes above the gaslights, and I had to take a long, deep hit right in front of you.
I guess I’m addicted.5
Get addicted to CrowdHealth covering your excess medical costs!
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I liked feminists in the 1980s. I called myself one of them. That was before their activists gaslit me for decades and kept draping me in their “villain” costume.
In some tellings, God breathes divine breath into the clay. Does he breathe it into the rib too? For fifteen opinions on that, call twelve rabbis.
According to Human Design, I have “Perspective:Power,” meaning that I am attuned to how people wield power, who is winning and who is losing. Do you have it too?
I think humanity has been gaslit for so many generations that we have no memory of traditional, organic human culture.
Biblical patriarchs had multiple wives, yet the modern nuclear family is called traditional by Bible-based leaders.
Traditional relationship rules play us off each other at every step:
No sex until marriage, to avoid unsupported kids;
But ban and shame sexual practices that don’t produce kids;
Then all-or-nothing commitment for our whole lives,Each stage a double-edged sword of mass shaming, a daunting standard;
Burden us fighting our own nature and each other,
Too busy to notice where these shitty narratives came from, who chose them, why and how.
Animals don’t get divorced. Some mate for life, some don’t. Some form nuclear families, some don’t. We can only wonder what humans do naturally, organically, when not poisoned en masse by shitty narratives. Even the “Fallen creatures” argument cannot justify why the traditional rules above are so gratuitously twisted and tormenting. Tribes making first contact with “civilization” have all sorts of practices. If modern civilized culture is natural, why aren’t all these tribes naturally following it before we find them?
Why else would my Human Design feature Gate 26, The Trickster? Mine lives in a delicious Shadow of reverse psychology and tough-love revelatory gaslighting (the good kind).