About

July, 2024.
 I have now moved this site over from wordpress. I got tired of wordpress's unusable back end. Ghost is much easier. So I must update the "about" page, explaining what I and this blog are about.

Below you will find headings “what this is about”, “selective autobiography”, “my motives for blogging”, “how I approach blogging”, “basic political philosophy”, and “why I use ‘Raccoon’ as a handle.”

What this is about



I want my work up on more than one platform. You will also find my stuff on Substack at https://timrourke.substack.com/ When I started with wordpress, I was getting few reads. I eventually had more subscribers there than on substack, and I have moved them over to Ghost.

Yet I am not getting as many reads as I would like, on either platform. We will see if I get more search engine and social media traffic with Ghost.



People have told me my stuff is good enough that it should be getting more attention than it is. It suggests "throttling" is a thing on most platforms. However, considering how people are being attacked on the net now, maybe it is better if I have a small site with a few committed readers.

I am slowly building readership, it seems mostly from world of mouth. I am not doing “search engine optimization” which is a waste of time. And money, if you are that stupid. The truth about search engines is that those with the money get “optimized”.



Selective Autobiography



I keep getting nudges from the social media I use, to provide more information about myself. I have good reasons for staying fairly anonymous and not putting up pictures of myself.



However, since I have decided I am going to be doing this blogging thing long term, it is probably a good idea to explain something of who I am and what I want to do with my accounts and sites.



Although, when I give people a “short biography” of myself, it is usually not well received. Some people disbelieve it. Some are offended or disturbed about it. Such people can go fuck themselves.



I am brilliant. I am not just more intelligent than most people but of a higher character. I have an innate and superior understanding of the right order of things. Had I been allowed to develop my potential I would have been among those fit to help lead the world in a positive direction. Of course, I am not being the slightest bit arrogant here. I am really a very humble and modest person. No, really!



Seriously, one of the uglier aspects of the human species is that it contains a lot of spiteful mediocrities who will try to tear down anyone better than themselves. It gets very bad when children of high potential are negligently left in the care of such people. This is why in my early years I was severely damaged, physically and emotionally.



Because of this I have suffered medical complications all my life which were not diagnosed and treated until into middle age. It was hard to get correct treatment for, and it is still hard to get correct management of, my medical problems. Because of this, a normal path in life, a career and family, were not realistic.



However, I was gradually able to create a reasonably good life for myself. My health has vastly improved with better medical attention. I eventually graduated from University of Toronto with an ’honours’ in Political Science. A fairly “honourable” achievement given my medical problems and the fact none of my close relatives have ever got out of high school.



I have a few friends, mostly with similar life circumstances, but I have become habituated to a cerebral life. The limited energy and frequent mental fogginess of fibromyalgia inevitably isolates we fibromyalgians.


My medical problems also make me seem stupid and strange to some kinds of people.



I grew up in Alberta. I moved to British Columbia and then to Ontario. Toronto the good has been pretty good for me. I used to spend a lot of time in various forms of political activism. I gradually became very disillusioned with that. None of these groups ever had any real solutions for the social problems which they seemed to see as their exclusive turf.



In the past I had done some writing. I decided to start blogging again now that I have reached ‘retirement age’ and had a little more time, and more money for blog and internet expenses. There are better platforms now for blogging. It seems to be a good choice.


My Motives for Blogging



Even if I have only a few dozen subscribers, I really enjoy writing this blog. I think I am almost the only blogger in the world who is not interested in trying to make money at it. I just want to be read and to have some ‘influence’ on the world. I think I have things to say that people should listen to.



If you want to make a living doing this, you have to find a large enough group of people and tell them what they want to read. That is what is wrong with the blogging business. I am not going to get such a big audience because I will tend to tell people what they do not want to read.



In the end, with my age and disabilities, there is not much else I can do. If I can sit up and tap a keyboard, and the stuff that comes out is coherent, I can keep doing it. I have decided that if two people read and understand something I wrote, it was worthwhile.


How I approach blogging


Some people have sneered at my project and think I should find another hobby. They do not suggest anything better I should do. This is more than just a hobby.


I have enough money to live on comfortably. I do not need to make a business out of blogging. I do not have the energy for it either.


Bloggers needing to make a living blogging is why most blogging is so bad. They have to find an audience and please them. They have to post frequently and regularly, even when they have nothing in particular to write about.


The best blogs, the few which really deserve to make money, are written by really bright and high energy people with a good and unique understanding of a special topic. Some of the most read blogs are garbage, pandering to the worst in human nature.


I have no special knowledge about anything. I am just a very good thinker. That is not a very marketable skill in this society. But that is what I do best.


So I blog. I do not keep to any schedule. I write when I have something to write about. I post it when I have it ready.


Sometimes I post nothing for weeks at a time when I want to work on something else for a little while.


I now have a sizeable body of work. I have started refining and updating my best, and best read, stuff. I will refer to that work and try to keep it relevant.

As I read through other media I will drop links to my own work if it is relevant to the topic. Some people will not like me doing that. I could not care less.


I have things to say which need to be said and are not being said enough.

I will do it as long as I can sit up and type, and the stuff I put out makes sense. Read.



Basic Political Philosophy



If I were to try to explain my entire belief system, I would need to write about a 200 page book. Maybe someday. Until then I will dribble it out as I can fit it into the topic of the day.



I line up broadly with the Marxist heritage. I have found Marx’s ideas to be the only political or economic theory which predicts or explains anything. However, I will easily work with a pragmatic, life premised person with conservative views.



I do have two big problems with Marxism. First, the problems of the world are clearly deeper than just ‘class struggle.’ This is shown by the tendency of revolutions to turn into new tyrannies.



The problem is that the world is dominated by sociopaths. It is not run by them; they are incapable of running anything. Yet it is very hard to stand against people who will do anything to dominate because otherwise they would be nothing.



The world is run by those few people with intelligence and character, and who were lucky enough to be brought up so as to be able to use their intellect. There are not enough such people. They are a huge threat to sociopaths, but absolutely necessary to maintaining civilization and to the survival of most of human kind.



Then there are the people who can do nothing but try to live and build a good life in the world made by the best of people and corrupted by the worst. Some have limited abilities and some like me are unable to realize our full abilities.



There will be no real improvement to the human condition until sociopaths can be segregated from normal humans. That will require the only revolution which will ever matter, where human kind overthrows the sociopaths.



If that sounds too weird or extreme to you, then you may not like reading me. Yet the overall sociological and psychological knowledge of the human race is increasing to a point where such an event is possible.



But back to Marxism. My second issue with Marxists is that they usually have this idea that it is bad somehow to work out what exactly capitalism is to be replaced by. We will get rid of capitalism and then start from there.



But they have no clear idea of how to get rid of capitalism, either. I say that to overcome capitalist oligarchy, we have to have a clear idea of what a post oligarchy society would look like. That will tell us how to go about overthrowing capitalism.



So that is what I try to blog most about; the post capitalist/oligarchic world and how to get us there. I think the basic ideas are there, ready to be used.



What is holding this back is not in getting people to take on new ideas, but in getting them to drop bad old ones. In other words, with ideological thinking.



This brings me to the most important political division in society. It is not left, right, and centre. It is ideological and non ideological personalities.



Ideological people have mental problems and cannot reason correctly, so they need someone to give them a narrative. Sociopaths are always there to give them one and that is how they dominate.



Non ideological people have, to varying degrees, learned proper ways of thinking. That is, to use the cognitive cycle to build schemata, mental models of reality which can be constantly adapted and refined.



It is very hard for sane, non ideological people to do anything in the face of crazy, ideological people who will do anything to make their delusions prevail. This is what is wrong with society and it comes out very strongly on the Internet.



As I said, shutting down these kinds of people will be the only revolution that will ever really matter. Of course, it is ridiculous to sit around on hold waiting for that to happen. It will happen when it is ready to happen. Meanwhile, life happens.



Why I use “Raccoon” as a handle.



I like raccoons. Something about them appeals to me. I used to have a family of them living almost under my window. I would sit up at night watching them. I was never so foolish as to approach them or try to feed them.



Also, some people think I look like a raccoon. My lifestyle was for some time much like a raccoon; living on the edges of human society and drawing sustenance from it, but staying separate from it and demanding to not be interfered with. Of course, that is not an ideal way to live.



As well, I used to be a fairly nocturnal critter myself. I have become a big advocate of good sleep.

 A very long time ago, when the internet was young and I was new to it, I needed to quickly come up with a handle. ‘Raccoon’ popped into my head. I have been using it ever since