Jivaldi @jivaldi - Twitter Profile

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Jivaldi @jivaldi

7 months ago

This.

Hunter Ash

@ArtemisConsort

7 months ago

I was a trans progressive. Not quite a communist. More of a stancil-style technocratic prog. I saw firsthand how transition failed to improve the lives of any of my trans friends. They were all mentally ill messes, before and after. Including me. The MtFs I knew did not seem psychologically feminine in any way. And generally, I was often frustrated by the lack of pragmatism of progressives. I shared their stated goals, but thought they were extremely illogical about how they went about trying to achieve them. They would choose moral posturing over efficacy every time. Several times, when I pointed this out, I was told this was a “fascist mindset”. Trying to do things effectively was fascist to them. They thought moral purity was all you need. I took mushrooms on New Year’s Eve, 2022, and it all came crashing down. I sat in a dark room and the cracks in my worldview widened until it all fell apart. I realized that this attitude, this allergy to rigorous thinking and aversion to necessary trade-offs, this prioritizing of seeming virtuous over tangible results, would destroy civilization if left unchecked. By the time I came down, I considered myself a terf despite still being trans. And I started reading everything I’d been told not to. I read J. K. Rowling’s open letter and agreed with every word. I read “The Case for Colonialism” by @BruceDGilley and works by Niall Ferguson and realized that the wealth of the West was created by our ability to innovate, not stolen. Indeed, that wealth, built from knowledge, was what enabled colonialism in the first place. I read the Bell Curve and dove into the hereditarian literature. I have enough math background that I could meaningfully understand the arguments and counterarguments, and the former seemed much stronger than the latter. More than that, it felt like hereditarians were actually trying to understand the world, while the anti-hereds were trying to obscure it. They did not feel like truth-seekers, and would frequently mix moral outrage into their technical critiques in a way that struck me as deeply suspicious and anti-scientific. Over several months of intense study, I reversed my position on most major policy issues. But the deeper change was philosophical, even spiritual. I fully accepted the necessary imperfection of the world, that progress is only possible via sacrifice, that we can only advance as a society if we can tolerate some people losing, that trying to eliminate all pain and loss would end up causing far more. Inequality is not inherently bad, and indeed is a necessary condition for the growth of knowledge at every scale of existence, from biology to economics. Evolution, whether biological or memetic or economic, is the only mechanism in existence that can produce order from chaos, structure from noise, beauty from nothingness. And evolution requires that weaker organisms, weaker ideas, weaker companies, and weaker nations be allowed to fail. Trying to prevent this stops the great engine of creation and leads to decay. “To the precise extent that we are spared, even for a moment, we degenerate” This strikes most as cold and cruel. But it is the nature of reality, and it is not clear it could be otherwise even in principle. If my aesthetics were not aligned with it, then my aesthetics, rather than the structure of existence, were what was wrong. I learned to see the beauty in creative destruction. I glimpsed a vision of God. And it changed my life. I detransitioned, started posting, got a job (via X), fell in love (via X). Now some of the most important people in the world read the words I write. I feel a deep and abiding sense of gratitude. And, after years of severe depression, I am excited to be alive.

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