Ants Don't Matter:

The course of history is not determined by the masses, but by the elites at their head.

The same 'masses' lived in Imperial Germany under the Kaiser, Weimar Germany, the Third Reich, West Germany, and the united Germany of today. One single lifetime can encompass the entire range of Germany's evolution in the 20th century.

In that time, whether that long-lived fellow was clever or dumb, social or anti-social, productive or lazy, was all meaningless in the face of Germany's sweeping, dramatic changes at the heights. The elites made Germany many different things over the period of time that our average fellow had absolutely zero impact on world historical events. Not a single ant in 20th century Germany was vital to the changes that occurred in Germany's outlook, behavior, economy, technology, art, philosophy, wars, etc. Even the vast accumulation of ants, though it sounds like they should matter, don't matter, because ants don't stand up for themselves but inevitably fall under the sway of some elite movement or propaganda or another. IE, ants never unite among themselves, but always serve an elite who has tied them to his own personal dream via intelligence, charisma, leadership, good looks, lies, or whatever.

Culture does not emerge from the bottom up. It starts at the top and trickles down. In 1775 most Americans had no desire to war with Britain or become an independent country. But then Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, a few generals took matters into their own hands and started a shooting war, a few lawyers wrote articles in their state papers, and pow, a new nation was born with fervent support from the ants.

Ants are not infinitely pliable -- they'll eventually turn against their current elites and follow other elites if they are too mistreated -- for instance the French Revolution moving swiftly into the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. But they also never seize the limelight themselves. No historical epoch will recount a bad leader using bad policies in his kingdom starting foolish wars while debasing the currency, but in the end it was harmless because the common folk worked especially diligently that year, stopped doing crime, were extremely brave in battle, and increased farm yields ten percent by plowing with all their muscled might, and the country came out ahead thanks to the individual efforts of the ants all working together.

This sort of fairy tale has never occurred so there is no reason to believe it will occur in the future, either. The range of influence an ant has in the larger world is simply too small to make any difference in the sweep of history. The only way to make a real difference in this world is to master nature, or master other men. The title 'elite' refers to scientists, artists, politicians, propagandists, generals, financiers, and CEO's. Depending on the caliber and intentions of these people, your country will end up progressing or regressing, growing or shrinking, happy or unhappy. It doesn't require the input of anyone else -- that's all taken care of by the elites' influence on the masses -- or in other words, it's an inevitability that the ants will be doing the right thing if the elites are doing the right thing -- which is leading the masses down the right path.

There are many good examples of this phenomena: North Korea and South Korea consist of the same population, the same ants, but the caliber and intentions of their elites are different, and as a result North Korea is hell and South Korea is heaven.

Before the Meiji restoration, Japan was living in the feudal age. After the revolution, Japan became so modern so fast it beat Russia in the war of 1905 -- this with the exact same population, even during the same lifetime, as before the Meiji restoration.

The country changed not due to the people underfoot, but due to the leadership at the very top. Even in democracies where leaders are voted into office by ants, their votes were predetermined by the efforts of the artists, propagandists, and financiers ahead of time. In a climate where thinking outside of the box is unthinkable, the politicians who can gain the vote of ants' predetermined ideas due to their limited education and media exposure all serve the elites' pre-extant will. Democracy has such giant loopholes that it was ridiculous to think it would ever counteract the power of the elites.

This is why I find it so ridiculous to sit around complaining about the conduct of ants in the world.

"This or that ant did this or that crime." So what? Stuff like that isn't going to change history.

"This or that ant cost the government money." So what? That pitiful sum of money will make no macroscopic impact on the economy.

Websites that focus on the misbehavior of broad masses, and think a country can be destroyed, or saved, by changing the behavior of the broad masses, are horribly mistaken.

Yes, a bad populace can destroy a country, and a good one can save it, but the only way you can ever affect ant behavior is, first of all, to affect ELITE behavior towards ants. Only people with the power to change how ants think and act will change how ants think and act. This does not include the ants themselves, who are helpless tools of the elites and predetermined to do what they are told. Not by some obscure help book that tells them to do x and y for their own good, but by the rulers of the country who are currently in power.

Power is what is needed to reform the masses. With power, you can even change an entire people's religion (witness the Muslim conquests or the ancient ruler of Russia who switched the people from pagans to Orthodox Christians.) Without power, you cannot affect the behavior of the masses, because your 'input' to their system is dwarfed by the constant 'input' they receive from those in power -- via school, tv, the press, movies, politicians' speeches, artistic sculptures and buildings, etc. It is also dwarfed by technicians who transform the role of the ants in the blink of an eye. For instance, whoever invented the tractor changed the behavior of ants, who used to farm their own plots of land 90% of the time by hand, into a completely new existence beginning in the 20th century.

The people we need to change aren't the masses. The masses will change themselves to fit their elites. They are a compliant, gullible bunch that will basically do whatever they're told, even to the point of mass enslavement, even if you kill 1/3 of the total population like in Cambodia. The people who need to change are the elites themselves.

And elites aren't going to change because you're complaining about bad schools they don't go to, crime in urban areas they never enter, illegitimacy rates when their families have an 85% successful marriage rate, and so on. How can I state this more clearly? What motivates elites to change isn't horror stories about black crime. It has to be something that actually involves them.

Currently elites get to feel morally superior to everyone else because they're so 'tolerant,' 'understanding,' and 'objective,' as opposed to the stupid masses who cling to their prejudices against blacks. What's in it for them to change their behavior? What's in it for them to change America? You would have to make them feel even more morally superior, even more proud of themselves, if they did something else -- or you would have to make a group of people even more competent than the current crop take power through some sort of insidious means. In any case, you couldn't just whine about black crime and expect something to change.

Appeals to an elite person's material advantages will not work. They already have all the money they'll ever need, even if the status quo is maintained. Threats of violence won't work, they know full well that the police and the military are firmly lined up behind them. At such a time as the threat would become credible, they would no longer be the elites, now would they?

The only impetus for an elite person to change is some combination of pride and shame. If they are made to feel good about themselves and admirable to others, that would appeal to even the richest man in the world. Likewise, even the richest man in the world can't stand being called names and treated like dirt. Therefore, the best tactic to change elite behavior is to praise elites who behave in a fruitful manner, and mock those who behave in a rotten manner.

Mocking ant behavior is a waste of time because A) everyone knows the masses are despicable, that's why they're the masses. B) ant behavior won't change until the elites above them decide they should change, no matter what you say or do.

Basically, it's pointless to attack blacks. They may seem like soft targets, but it's just bullying the weak, which actually makes the author seem weak and contemptible themselves. Can't they pick on someone their own size?

Do you think Voltaire or Rousseau spent all day mocking peasant drunkenness or illiteracy? No, they challenged the prevailing elites, their political and religious and philosophical foundations, without a care for the world about what the ants were doing or thinking. Did Martin Luther nail his protests against the door of the village idiot? No, he nailed it to the door of a cathedral where an elite could read it loud and clear.

Elites tend to be smart people who understand the basic rules of logic. They can easily be shamed if they find themselves on the wrong side of an irrational, absurd argument. If you shame them for making obviously dumb statements, they will retreat from their positions and change themselves, just to avoid falling into the same trap twice. Likewise, if you cast a certain character as a hero in a convincing way, either through fiction or non-fiction (Like Plutarch's Lives or the gospels that narrated the life of Christ), elite people can't help but want to be like said hero and share in their glory. Elites have standards, unlike ants. It's hard for them to just drown themselves in liquor or soap operas and feel themselves complete. Unless they can wake up looking Jesus or Bismark or Augustus or Plato or Newton in the eye, they'll quickly grow despondent and unsatisfied. Show them someone better than themselves, and they will change to be like them, for the sake of their own pride.

Elites, more than anyone else, don't want to lose to anyone. They want to be the best. If you show a best that's better than them, they will respond. Olympic athletes perform all their greatest feats when in close proximity to each other, in direct competition. The spirit of wanting to beat the people they admire around them gives them superhuman strength, determination, talent, and ability.

The elites in the outside world are the same. Show them someone even greater than themselves, and the spirit of competition will burn fiercely, until they find some way to equal themselves to this legendary elite competitor at least in their own eyes, if not the public's.

In any case, the target should always be the elites, not the ants. Output should be intended to be 'input' into what forms the mind of the elites. The master of men are the elites -- so the master of the elites are the gods of this world.

This is what Dostoeveskey meant when he said poets form the '2nd state within a state.' Because poets rule even the rulers of a country, poets are in fact the rulers from the very beginning.

I'd like to see more people directly taking on the elites, via people who are better than them, or debates that clearly outdo their arguments, in a way that threatens the one thing elites still have to lose -- not their lives, not their property, but their social status and their self-identity. Blogs posting videos of misbehaving proles and saying 'when will we learn?' aren't going to change history.

Uncle Tom's Cabin changed history. Lincoln said to Harriet Beacher Stowe, "so you're the little girl who caused this big war?" Or whatever. And how did she do it? By changing the opinion of the elites. Suddenly, it was shameful to support slavery, and brave and cool to be an abolitionist. With that headwind, the elites started making decisions on how they would preach to their ant congregations, what articles to print in their ant newspapers, and so on. Soon enough an anti-slavery hysteria had picked up in regions that had never before given a damn -- and pow, the war between the states began.

The goal is to become a master of elites. The means are varied. But none of them involve bullying the weak. We can afford for say, 90% of people to be criminals, impoverished, lazy, divorced, or whatever, and it really won't have a large impact on the welfare of the country -- as measured by the per capita GDP of its elites, its artistic and scientific advances, its military might, etc. South Africa, despite being a complete basket case, is a relatively rich country in the world because the elites are still in charge of almost all its assets. Even though Mexico is only 10% white, her elites run Mexico in every field, and they're almost 100% white. As a result, Mexico, Brazil, and such countries really don't suffer from what their ants are doing in the slums and ghettos and boondocks. Just ignore them and move on -- in the circles the elites move in, it's as foreign to their existence as a city in China. (No, probably more foreign. Let's go with a city in Nepal to get a proper sense of their meaninglessness.)