Hey Bentham's Bulldog: Come fight me!
It's time to Discipline and Punish a modern analytic
EDIT 4/19/2025:
Looks like this might be happening:
Recently
published an article called The Postmodern Right.I haven’t read this article and don’t intend to because I already know exactly what BB is going to say, having already engaged the handsome young mensch in a lengthy and circular debate on the topic last year.
Long story short this is not an argument either party can “win,” because BB incorrectly thinks you can derive an ought from an is and obnoxiously calls his own intuitions about the world “obvious” even when he knows perfectly well that 95% of flesh and blood human beings would vehemently disagree with him.
He gets away with doing this because his personal sensibilities code as high status among autistic Jews in SF and a certain type of Safe Edgy / Pick-Me pantsuit woman, both of whom are widely prevalent on Substack.
Clearly this is an instrumentally effective line of rhetoric and I sincerely applaud BB for having optimized it so effectively. But pretending any of this is about “truth” or “reasons” is just fantastically solipsistic and gay, because it’s always been postmodern.
The simple fact of the matter is that life is mostly all about force pushing up against force and the arbitrary despotism of desire. The vast majority of people only give a shit about “morality” as a plausibly deniable status-signaling mechanism (arguably the only one permitted under post-scarcity conditions), or as a leveling mechanism to prevent tall poppies from hoarding resources or status.
Meanwhile virtually nobody changes their mind because of “reasons” unless it’s something dry and boring about science etc. that they don’t actually care about.
For anything that actually matters to them it’s basically all just petty animal whim obfuscated behind post-facto rationalization with varying degrees of self-awareness.
And just to be clear, it’s not that I like this! Anyone who engages deeply with my work knows that I’m just as autistic as any of you faggots and instinctively approach the world in a manner every bit as naively earnest and enthusiastic.
But I’m also interested in what actually works instead of feeding myself copium—including when it comes to the is-ought distinction and intractable temperamental conflicts undergirding moral disagreement—and THAT is why my style of rhetoric is based mostly around aesthetics and appeals to my interlocutor’s self-interest instead of gay manipulative moralizing.
Anyway if folx are interested in my extended thoughts on the matter they’re free to read my article Against Morality (incidentally the piece which caused BB to unsubscribe from my publication several weeks ago).
The main takeaway is that I actively reject the legitimacy of “reasons,” as well as the intellectual worth of BB’s own discipline of Analytic Philosophy—not from a position of ignorance, given that I myself graduated Summa with a degree in the subject and understand it fairly well on its own terms—but because I genuinely believe that overt sophistry and intellectual performance art are more honest than “argumentation.”
And it’s precisely because of that stance that I’ll now take this article more in that direction and move us out of pointless and boring Talmudic debate.
…specifically by challenging
to a boxing match.
Why am I doing this?
For one thing BB called my dear friend
“deeply unpleasant,” and proceeded to misgender her in a plausibly deniable way when he obviously knows she’s a chick—a tack I found deeply juvenile and honestly a bit too stereotypical even for BB… almost as though the stratagem originated from someone else who resents her specifically?But I’m not here to white knight Sai—she’s a tough gal who can easily stick up for herself. I’m writing this because there really needs to be some sort of social reprisal for acting this bitchy as a grown-ass man. Someone REALLY needs to teach BB how to bully people less obliquely and navigate the boundaries of social interchange in a way that doesn’t make him seem like such a sniveling teenage mean girl.
Now admittedly the social incentives for acting like a teenage mean girl are tragically high on platforms like Substack, and the reader can rest assured that no one understands this reality more viscerally than Wally B.
Yet that’s precisely why we Substackers need to figure out ways of reimposing masculine honor norms on the world wherever possible.
Look, everyone knows that I’m the furthest thing from a RETVRN type. But after a certain point enough is simply enough.
My terms are as follows:
BB can have literally all the money we raise and give everything to shrimp or niggers or whatever, BUT his team also needs to be responsible for 100% of the logistics—I’m assuming that as a rich Jew from California he has multiple family members who could make this happen with a couple of phone calls.
BB understands perfectly well that he and I both possess the verbal IQ and promotional chops to raise a six figure sum from this fight, which means that if he declines my challenge he is directly morally responsible for murdering a bunch of black people and/or shrimp. By his own ethical framework he’s obligated to accept.
We’ll do it in December so both of us have plenty of time to train up and get in superb physical condition—I want this to be an entirely dignified affair that brings honor to both of our platforms. Personally I quite like the angle of doing it on Hanukkah so I can say a bunch of anti-Semitic shit in the weeks beforehand and really juice audience engagement… but BB might find that a bit tacky idk. Honestly a Christmas theme could also be fun—let’s get creative with it.
I get to have Malaria Nets as my ring music
We can stream it live or release a polished version later—your choice BB
We can also organize an in-person debate for the next day if that strikes your fancy and will get more asses in seats. But if we do that I suggest we also make it a panel debate so it’s less of a frivolous eceleb thing.
and obviously we’ll think of other shit too, but we can litigate behind closed doors.
Anyway I’ll end this article by shilling a response to BB’s piece from his coethnic and my longtime friend / mentor / collaborator
:
If you aren’t subscribed to Ancient you should absolutely change that, because the dude isn’t just a talented writer—he’s a successful sales guy and personal trainer who excels at switching between domains and leveraging wisdom gained from one realm to succeed in another, mostly because he approaches the world with both immense self-awareness and an intuitive sense for distinct vantage points and resolutions.
This is something I myself have really tried to cultivate over the past several years, and is also the main reason I’ve already chosen Ancient to be my Mickey Goldmill if this fight actually ends up happening.
And I really hope it does end up happening. It would be fantastic for both of our platforms, for our communities, for modern intellectualism writ large...
And remember BB—if you say no then you aren't just a pussy.
You're a fucking murderer.
I would buy a ticket to this event
>Autistic Jews in SF
Just say the S word.