Chase's Victim Article, TikTok, and Inorganic Demoralization

[Kent]

I just read Chase's fascinating new article on the nature of victim mentality in modern culture. His view of it as learned behavior aimed at appealing to authority, or appeal to the anonymous crowd of social media, struck a profound chord.

While Chase's article approaches the civilizational transformation of honor-to-victim culture as a complex natural process, I wanted to share a few thoughts I had of potential inorganic influences shaping modern victim culture today.

A series of viral TikTok's/Tweets have recently demonstrated this learned victim zeitgeist in extreme form. I've selected a few to provide a gist of the genre, its worth going through the comments in last two videos in particular to understand this mentality.

1. One of many similar gym TikToks

2. Gaston at Disney World outraged by a girl hitting on him

3. A girl starts crying after a guy tries to high five her

We know that Homo sapiens are a social species, that isolation is linked to serious health problems, and that studies have found the majority of Americans to consider themselves lonely. These TikToks represent a retardation of basic social skills, a hyper-fragile new form of puritanism, and the rewriting of social norms to serve those with extreme anxiety at the expense of everyone else. This egregore exacerbates the psychological problems plaguing so many in the West today.

I believe these TikToks basically serve the function of psychological warfare. While we can speculate as to whether people controlling social media platforms put their thumb on the scale for virality, we know that TikTok and other social media platforms are heavily influenced by intelligence agencies, and I think it can be useful to parse some of the interests dying the threads of our bizarre cultural fabric. After all, there are many historical examples of social engineering 'divide and conquer' tactics throughout history, as James Madison noted in response to questions about how elites can answer the threat that democracy poses to their status.

ChatGPT's answer when I asked it if the CIA had ever intentionally sowed gender division as tool of destabilization or demoralization:

In William Blum's book "America's Deadliest Export: Democracy - The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else", Blum does touch on the topic of the CIA's use of identity politics to sow division in foreign countries. He mentions how the CIA supported feminists in Poland and Nicaragua as part of their efforts to undermine enemy governments, and how the agency has been involved in promoting LGBTQ rights in certain countries. Blum argues that the CIA's support for these groups is not driven by a genuine concern for their rights, but rather to advance their own political agenda.

ChatGPT's answer to a question about CIA funding of gender and sexuality and how it may have impacted contemporary gender debates. My question inspired in part by the notorious "woke CIA" video.

During the Cold War, the CIA funded various research projects related to gender and sexuality as part of its broader strategy to shape cultural narratives and promote American values. The CIA saw gender and sexuality as important cultural battlegrounds where it could exert influence and advance its interests.

One example of this is the funding provided by the CIA and other government agencies to the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Alfred Kinsey, the founder of the institute, received more than $70,000 in funding from the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies, including the CIA. The CIA was interested in Kinsey's research on sexuality and hoped to use his findings to shape American attitudes towards sexuality and morality.

The CIA also provided funding to various think tanks and foundations that focused on gender and sexuality issues. For example, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, both of which received funding from the CIA, supported feminist organizations and women's studies programs in universities. The CIA hoped that these programs would promote American values and counter communist propaganda.

One prominent feminist who had connections to the CIA was Gloria Steinem. Steinem worked for the CIA-funded Independent Research Service in the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing articles and giving lectures on women's issues. She also attended CIA-sponsored conferences and meetings, and some have speculated that her work for the agency influenced her later activism and writing.

Sidney Hook, a philosopher and prominent Cold War liberal, was also connected to the CIA's efforts to shape gender and sexuality narratives. Hook worked with the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization that received funding from the CIA, and wrote articles on gender and sexuality issues for its publications. Hook saw these issues as important cultural battlegrounds where the West could gain an advantage over the Soviet Union.

Overall, the CIA's funding of research on gender and sexuality, as well as its support for think tanks and foundations that focused on these issues, had a significant impact on contemporary gender debates. The agency's efforts helped to shape American attitudes towards sexuality, gender roles, and morality, and played a role in the rise of feminist activism in the United States. However, the CIA's involvement in these areas has also been criticized for its political motivations and for the potential harm it may have caused to individuals and communities.

While I think Chase's victim article is right to emphasize the organic shift from honor-dignity-victim cultures, I believe modern victim culture is in part the result of inorganic social engineering. This is why this community is a great benefit to those who engage with it: a defiance against a cultural code of social atomization, victimhood, and vitriol between the sexes so severe it has splintered the concept of gender.