content/drafts/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace.md

   1 Title: If in Some Smothering Dreams You Too Could Pace
   2 Date: 2021-02-23
   3 Category: other
   4 Tags: cathartic, epistemic horror
   5 Status: draft
   6
   7 > [...] [and this is a war, and we are soldiers](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i8q4vXestDkGTFwsc/human-evil-and-muddled-thinking).
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   9 Fighting a Total Culture War to prevent your neurotype-demographic from becoming permanent mind-slaves of the [Blue Egregore](/2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/#blue-egregore) is no excuse for being a jerk.
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  11 I mean, it's an explanation, but that's different from an excuse: being a jerk [has consequences](https://xkcd.com/1357/), and you need to take the consequences like a man.
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  13 This, then, is the mindset of a soldier (though our [beautiful cutting weapons](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/) be words instead of swords): to inflict pain, to incur guilt—and yet to have [only tactical](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2020/02/relationship-outcomes-are-not-particularly-sensitive-to-small-variations-in-verbal-ability/) regrets. Given the chance to do it all over again, you would—but solely to be more skillful in projecting rhetorical force to secure the objective, to say more clearly what _needed to be said_. Not to inflict less pain or incur less guilt.