{"id":72430,"date":"2026-01-03T01:00:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T06:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=72430"},"modified":"2026-01-04T10:47:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T15:47:28","slug":"qotd-fumbling-towards-bicameralism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/01\/03\/qotd-fumbling-towards-bicameralism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: “Fumbling towards bicameralism”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“Fumbling towards bicameralism” also seems to explain one of the Left’s other signature pathologies: Their ability to “lie” to themselves, and I’m going to have to stop putting stuff in quotation marks lest I destroy my keyboard, but here again “lie” is far too weak a word. Leftist self-deception is so total, we unicameral folks can’t grasp it. They know, right? On some deep down fundamental level? If only because it’s impossible \u2014 damn it, impossible<\/em> \u2014 that they don’t know. How can they keep fucking up so egregiously, in exactly the same way, every single goddamn time, and learn nothing?<\/p>\n

And yet, “self-deception” shouldn’t be possible. How can you lie to your self? It raises all kinds of heavy epistemological issues, explored in a fun little book called Self-Deception<\/em> by philosopher Herbert Fingarette<\/a>. As I recall (it has been years since I’ve read it), Fingarette ends up advancing a kind of split-consciousness theory, too, as the only internally consistent one. How could it be otherwise? The “liar’s paradox<\/a>” is a fun little game to play in the first class meeting of Logic 101, but nobody can really live that way … and yet we do deceive ourselves, all the time, and no one more than SJWs, whose lives indeed seem to be nothing but<\/em> “self-deception.”<\/p>\n

Bicamerality explains that. The “god” that lives in the smartphone says X<\/strong> today, so X<\/strong> it is. That same “god” says not-X<\/strong> tomorrow, so now it’s not-X<\/strong>! It’s not<\/em> self-contradiction, it’s not self-deception, for the simple reason that there’s no real “self” at all.<\/p>\n

Finally, it explains what might be the most frustrating thing about the Left, the thing that’s likely to end in a nuke or two here before too long: Their utter inability to see the glaringly obvious consequences of their actions. Those of us who tend to see “Leftism” as a big conspiracy love to point out that if they, the Left, were just<\/em> stupid (childish, contrarian, herd animals, whatever), cold impersonal chance alone would guarantee that at least some of their fuckups would benefit us at least some of the time. Much like The Media’s “retractions” and “admissions” and so on, the “mistakes” always always always<\/em> go in only one direction … ergo, they’re not mistakes.<\/p>\n

That’s the reef on which we “emergent behavior” types always crash. To me, “emergent behavior” still seems like the best explanation … but however the behavior emerges, it’s always<\/em> retarded. They’ve never made a non-stupid decision, not once, and it’s always stupid in exactly the same way<\/em>. I remember waking up one morning to the sound of something crashing into my bedroom window. I figured it was a bird, which happens all the time, and it was … except that it kept happening, monotonously, every fifteen seconds or so. I got up to look, and here was a robin, smashing itself into the glass over and over and over again. It was early spring \u2014 mating season \u2014 and this stupid robin had mistaken its own reflection<\/em> for a rival. I must’ve watched this bird slam himself into the glass for ten minutes, “attacking” his “rival”, before he knocked himself out cold …<\/p>\n

That’s how the Left do. Always. They simply can’t<\/em> learn, and they can’t<\/em> change their pattern. The only explanation for that, therefore, must be<\/em> that it’s programmed. Literally. Zero consciousness involved. They do what they do because they literally cannot do otherwise. Their “god” has put “rage” into their thumos<\/em>. Just as Achilles would’ve literally jumped off a cliff had his “god” told him to, so the Left does … well, pretty much everything their teevee tells them to.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, this has some important implications for practical action. How does one “get inside that OODA loop”, as the keyboard commandos like to say? In the land of the utterly unconscious, the one-brained man is king …<\/p>\n

Severian, “Striving Towards Bicamerality”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2022-03-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update, 4 January<\/strong>: Welcome, Instapundit<\/em> readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack<\/em> \u2013 https:\/\/substack.com\/@nicholasrusson<\/a> that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Fumbling towards bicameralism” also seems to explain one of the Left’s other signature pathologies: Their ability to “lie” to themselves, and I’m going to have to stop putting stuff in quotation marks lest I destroy my keyboard, but here again “lie” is far too weak a word. Leftist self-deception is so total, we unicameral folks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[66,28,53,41,13],"tags":[1020,139,1462,997],"class_list":["post-72430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-progressives","tag-psychology","tag-severian","tag-socialjustice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-iQe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72430"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100125,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72430\/revisions\/100125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}