In totality, this book provides yet another reason why Europe became a global power and that was competition not only between kingdoms and nations but competition with the Catholic church which held considerable amounts of land, wealth, and power in Europe. Europe had the perfect storm of variables to make them the epicenter of competition which then incentivized all sorts of productive and innovative advancements that the rest of the world lacked. Had China been divided geographically and also had some powerful church to deal with, China would have embraced greater productivity and innovations. They would have embraced naval power to extract labor and wealth from overseas to better compete with other Chinese kingdoms and nations as well as the central Chinese church. Of course, this all happened in Europe instead of China.
While Communist China was not overly concerned with being invaded by and overtaken by Europe or even Japan, they realized that lived on a rather small planet with ferocious free market competition from the US, Europe, and Japan. With the fall of the Soviet Union, they realized that if they did not embrace some level of Capitalism and improve their productivity and innovation, they too might collapse like the Soviets. Yet, this was not caused by one thing like the collapse of the Soviet Union but rather a whole array of factors including the pressures of an increasingly powerful Japan locally and the US and Europe from afar. The failures of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution would also impact new leaders who had suffered through them and not the war with Japan. They were more concerned with their own leaders killing and harming them than the Japanese and so worked to reform leadership to embrace Capitalism and prevent future mass starvation, poverty, and suffering. You can’t say it was just the fall of the Soviets or ping pong diplomacy that changed China. It’s always an amalgam of variables, any one of which may be the straw that broke the camel’s back but not the main or central contributing factor. Social researchers will all argue that it was the pot that broke the camel’s back, the blanket, the water bottle, the food, the tent, but ultimately, it was all the supplies combined that broke the camel’s back.
The church and secular rulers were already at war when the Concordat was created as the author admits. King Henry II (1133-1189) in England passed four writs that provided property rights and security to the people and trial by jury instead of religious ‘ordeal’ “by which innocence or guilt was determined through the presumed intervention of God.” Long before the British merchants demanded rights and liberties to combat the power of royalty, the king of England ironically was providing rights and liberties for the people to combat the power of the church. In essence, the secular rulers were creating the very rope by which they would be hung, but at the moment, it was a simple weapon against the church. Of course, the British merchants were also creating the very rope by which they too would be hung by the US colonialists who used British liberalism as a foundation for revolution against their British rulers. Today, our rulers must continue the ruse that they truly care about everyone’s rights and liberties when in fact, they only cared about their own when it was circumscribed by more powerful forces like the British monopolies, royalty, and the church. Of course, our rulers have pulled off the ultimate trick of making us believe that we’re better off without rights and liberties in order to wage war against the ‘greater universal threats’ of Communism, crime, drugs, radical Islam, terrorism, and China.
As much as we like to think that we have advanced toward some ideal liberal, democratic, free market, egalitarian, populist, utopian ideal, this is just so much gaslighting. These ideals have been sold to us in order for the masses to rise up and rally against some common enemy, whether it is Communism, fascism, European colonialism and imperialism, monarchs, the Catholic Church, etc. In order to get the masses to join them in their fight against Communism or the British Empire or the Catholic Church, the contenders for rule want us to believe that they really care about us and are sick and tired of the existing rulers exploiting us. Of course, we’d support them. But it’s only so much propaganda and malarkey. In reality, the contenders simply replace the old guard and old rulers with a brand new style of exploitation.
* * *
As much as we like to think that we are enlightened, we still hold on to cultural artifacts. The secular, atheist world likes to think that they’ve been liberated from the irrational and archaic hold of religion, but they have simply replaced god and the bible with new dogmas and a scientific community that is heavily biased toward corporate profits. Dr. Fauci may well be the cardinal of COVID with his decrees that are based on anything but science. The CDC is the new church, but it’s in bed with Big Pharma. Anyone who challenges the cardinal of COVID and the CDC high church are lambasted as heretics and burned at the stake of public opinion which is simply a charade perpetrated by corporate-owned mass media. So called fact checking is just another term for an inquisition whereby those in power determine who is telling the truth and who is going to hell.
We like to think that we’re not racist anymore, but we still cling to the entire diabolically stupid concept of race. There are white people in South Africa, but they’re not black. They are people of German ancestry in Israel, but they’re not Arab or Asian. Is Jewish an ethnicity or a religion? What if you don’t practice Judaism? Everyone is Hispanic in Central and South America except the Brazilians who speak Portuguese. Is a black Brazilian a Latino or black? Is a white Russian living in Siberia an Asian? Is Europe a continent or subcontinent? Why isn’t Quebec, Brazil, or China a subcontinent? And most white people are more pink or salmon or pig-colored, but we call them white as if they have no color. And most American black people are brown. And there are no yellow Asians. The whole notion of race is both racist and stupid, yet people who claim not to be racist will still call people white, black, Asian, and Hispanic.
And we like to think that we are not stupid enough to believe in royalty and aristocracy, but many people on the US East Coast and the South talk about pedigree and ancestry like there is still such a thing as blue blood. The English still worship their royals despite the fact that a native East London commoner has more English blood than the royal family. And let us never forget that the royal family could not tolerate an African-American woman marrying into the family.
But the Catholic Church still lingers with us to this day in the form of aggressive proselytizing, intolerance for outsiders, persecution of heretics, and statism. Instead of organized big religion, we now have organized big government, and instead of God and salvation, we have politicians who promise heaven on Earth: lower taxes, no wars, economic growth, jobs, low crime, cheap gas, freedom, prosperity, no corruption, constraining big business, higher wages, a cleaner environment, cheaper health care, racial equality, women’s rights, and control of immigration. They might as well be priests, and god might as well be government. We worship our government’s flag like we worshipped the crucifix. We put all our hopes and dreams in the government saving and protecting us. The devil comes in many forms, immigrants, minorities, women, Jews, transexuals, gay people, Muslims, the Japanese, the Chinese, Communists, Socialists, homeless people, rural white people, you name it. Only big government can save us from them.
* * *
I recently uploaded the Nova AI app and asked it to give me an analysis of the impact of the Concordat of Worms on European global dominance.
“The Concordat of Worms, signed in 1122, is an agreement between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor that effectively resolved the Investiture Controversy, a power struggle between the church and the state over the appointment of bishops and other church officials. While the Concordat of Worms was a significant event in European history, its direct influence on Europe’s later domination of the world is a complex argument to make.
It is important to note that the Concordat of Worms primarily addressed the issue of investiture and the relationship between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor. Its focus was on resolving a specific conflict within the Christian Church, rather than directly shaping Europe’s later global dominance. The agreement did lay the groundwork for a more stable relationship between the secular and ecclesiastical powers, but it did not single-handedly propel Europe to world domination.
Europe’s eventual domination of the world was influenced by a multitude of factors, including geographical advantages, technological advancements, economic developments, colonialism, and geopolitics. Factors such as the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the Age of Exploration played significant roles in shaping Europe’s rise. These developments contributed to Europe’s military, economic, and political power on a global scale over several centuries.
While the Concordat of Worms indirectly contributed to the stability of European governments and helped shape the relationship between church and state, it is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. To argue that the Concordat of Worms was the main reason for Europe’s domination of the world oversimplifies a complex historical process and overlooks the numerous other influences and factors that contributed significantly to Europe’s global ascendency.”
Like many books, this book gets a little lost in the weeds and could use either more editing or an expurgated summary version that I now see more and more of on Amazon. Historians are also perhaps the most boring writers in the universe. Journalists are the best. Scientists are hit or miss. Actors are shallow. Lawyers don’t write books, at least of interest to anyone. Politicians have no self-awareness and are predictably full of shit and narcissists. Entrepreneurs are fascinating and adventurous. Economists are full of shit. They generally have no idea what they’re talking about. Athletes are generally stupid and not very insightful but have lots of fun anecdotes. Criminals never take responsibility and blame everyone else.
This book serves as a counterpoint to Guns, Germs, and Steel. It argues that the reason Europe dominated the world was the product of three treaties signed in the 12th century. “This book contends that a mostly forgotten or overlooked deal, the Concordat of Worms, signed on September 23, 1122, and its predecessors agreed to by the Catholic Church and the kings of England and France in 1107, laid the foundation for northern Europe to become more prosperous than southern Europe, for parts of Europe to break with the Catholic Church while other parts stuck with it, for some kingdoms in Europe to develop accountable government ahead of other kingdoms, and for science to flower more successfully in some portions of Europe than in others.”
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, the argument is that Europe benefitted from being at the end of a horizontal chain of humanity where technology was easily transferable from the East, namely, gunpowder from China. They also benefited from animals and plants that could be domesticated easier. I would also add that because of Europe’s geography, it couldn’t be easily united under one kingdom like China. Because China was united, it never truly cared about developing technology, because it already held a dominant position and never had to fear outside invasion until of course the Europeans came along. For this reason, Chinese emperors turned their backs on developing gunpowder in guns and cannons and using a huge naval fleet to conquer the world. It was more concerned with consolidating and keeping power at home than expanding power abroad. Europe, on the other hand, was a divided subcontinent with competing nations that could benefit tremendously by exploiting and advancing technology and using naval fleets to conquer lands overseas and steal their resources and labor.
I would also add that while Europe benefitted from spreading disease to the Western Hemisphere, Europe benefitted from acquiring disease from the East, namely the Bubonic Plague. It was this earth-shattering pandemic that jolted Europe from its religious slumber and backwards culture. It liberated countless people from old traditions and norms and religion itself. Europeans had every incentive after the Plague to abandon religion and embrace science which could better handle future possible pandemics. Had the Western Hemisphere suffered the Plague without European colonization, perhaps they too would have abandoned their emperors, old traditions, and religions and embraced science and technology too.
I’d have to say that from the outset, the author’s thinking is flawed. The complexity of how Europe conquered the world cannot be just based upon one thing like a treaty or even three treaties. And this treaty is just one example of how rulers decided to incentivize rule. You could just as easily if not more successfully argue that the Romans choosing Christianity as a state religion was the single greatest cause of Europe’s global conquest. You could argue it was the availability of easily domesticated plants or animals. You could argue it was the horizontal positioning of Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. You could argue it was Europe’s difficult geography that kept one country from conquering all of it. You could even make a strong argument that the existence of a large island, namely the United Kingdom provided a continual counterpoint to any single European nation dominating the entire continent all the way up to and including World War II. Without England, one European power would have more easily dominating Europe. Pesky England kept all of Europe in check. You could argue it was Adam Smith and Capitalism. You could argue it was the Plague. The truth is, it was a combination of things, all critical components and any one of them could have been missing, but the unique amalgam of them all contributed to Europe’s dominance.
One of the pitfalls of specialization is that every specialist overestimates their field’s influence and impact on the whole, because all they see is their specialty. It takes an enormous brain to specialize in many fields where you can then compile a much richer and more accurate picture of what influences the whole. Otherwise all you have are myopic specialists who think their specialty rules the universe. In other words, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The author also makes the mistake from the beginning that rulers and for that matter, any human, makes decisions based on carefully considering costs and benefits and the possible and plausible reactions of opponents like a chess game. Modern psychology is proving this notion to be antiquated and outright incorrect. You would never be able to go back in time and correctly guess what any ruler would do in any given situation based upon exactly what they knew at the time, like jumping into some chess game at any given point. We now know that most all of our decisions are made not upon rational analysis and some cost-benefit analysis but rather they are based upon gut instincts and hunches and a considerable amount of irrational assumptions, beliefs, inclinations, biases, fears, desires, and emotionally-laden memories.
In fact, of all people, we know that rulers, much like corporate CEOs are incredibly narcissistic, egomaniacal, and deaf to rational advice. They have inflated egos that are reinforced by sycophants who try to convince them that they are destined for greatness, and whatever they decide is probably correct, because they are destined for greatness. Rulers are renown for making terrible decisions that any commoner would probably avoid. Whenever they experience some degree of success defeating any enemy, especially early in life, like a gambler who experiences big success early on, they become addicted to conquest and overstretch their supply lines or simply face allied or greater opponents and eventually lose. Likewise, when their opponent defeats them, the opponents then becomes addicted to conquest themselves. After the US and Soviets defeated Hitler, both the US and Soviets became addicted to world conquest and fought a proxy war against each other for the next half century. Success can make one cocky and irrational.
I think I can agree with the author that competition between monarchs and the church as well as between monarchs and other monarchs contributed greatly to Europe’s global dominance. This is the premise of free market Capitalism. The more competition there is, the more participants will embrace innovation and any tactic or strategy that can improve their position and strength. While both Japan and China dismissed naval power and gunpowder because they comfortably ruled their kingdoms without significant threat of attack, Europe’s great collection of kingdoms and later nations would make each kingdom and nation extremely insecure in its reign. It would naturally embrace any advantage over an opponent and as such, European kingdoms and nations with a coast would embrace naval power while all kingdoms and nations would embrace gunpowder.
* * *
Despite my disagreement with the entire premise of the book, it uncovers some pretty fascinating things about Papal history, in particular the Investiture Controversy, “an eight-year-long clash between the church, kings, and emperors over who had the right to appoint bishops and to invest them with the vast power that bishops possessed.” It all started when Pope Stephen II anointed Pepin the Short, ruler of the Franks, the king of the Franks. “In return, Pepin’s army defeated the Lombards who were threatening to capture Rome.
The lands that Pepin seized from the Lombard king were then given to the papacy in 756, not long before Stephen died.”
What followed was a transformation of the Catholic Church from an entity generally concerned with the religious realm and its followers to a thoroughly corrupt, nepotistic, autocratic regime obsessed with power and wealth.
The book reveals the famous quote about power and corruption but includes another sentence that is rarely included, “As Lord Acton pithily observed in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.””
“The previous religiosity of popes declined so much that the years between 904 and 964 became know as the saeculum obscurum, “the unknown or obscure century.””
The intrigue, drama, nepotism, and murders of the early 900s, in particular the powerful Tusculum family could be a book by itself and fodder for a Netflix series. “After the death of Pope Formosus in 896… virtually every pope for the next half century was murdered or died under unexplained circumstances.”
* * *
“The church understood from its beginnings that it could spread the message of its power by commissioning and disseminating Christian art and other subjects clearly associated with Christianity.” It is often believed that the Soviets invented propaganda, but in reality, they were copying the church. They simply replaced the omnipresence of religious icons and art with statues and posters of their leaders and art conveying the primacy of Communist ideals.
I would add that what the church added was a certain flavor to European global dominance by contributing the concept of absolute intolerance for nonbelievers and religious competitors (as evidenced during the Spanish Inquisition and Crusades) and aggressive proselytizing which is nothing more than aggressive recruiting and indoctrination. However, I would argue that these were elements unnecessary for global dominance but rather contributed to Europe’s particular brand of cruelty, viciousness, and inhumanity. Had China decided to colonize the world, I believe, they would have been much less intolerant of foreign religions (as was Genghis Khan) and much less derogatory toward foreign cultures. They may well have still enslaved them and stolen their resources, but I don’t believe they would have been so vicious and cruel as the Europeans who were well versed in the viciousness and cruelty of the Catholic church, and the Catholic church’s brand of propaganda and indoctrination. While monarchs certainly tortured and abused peasants, they probably tempered that with the possibility of the peasants revolting. For the Church, their power was so absolute with peasants convinced that they were the middlemen to god and eternal salvation that they could torture and abuse peasants at will because those peasants were heretics who were going to hell anyway.
* * *
When you think about the game of chess, it seems perplexing that the bishop would have so much power, the ability to travel so far and cut diagonally through the board. It makes sense once you understand the power and influence of the Catholic church in old Europe. A bishop’s moves could take down pawns, knights, and castles and even queens and check the king.
After a few bumpy starts and broken agreements, the Concordat of Worms formalized “…acceptance of the idea that investiture [assigning bishops] was the sole right of the church and acceptance or rejection of nominees was the right of the relevant king, who could withhold the regalia, including the revenue from the diocese, pending his acceptance of the nominee and the nominee’s pledge to defend the monarch through the lance.”
It doesn’t take a genius to see the inherit dilemma here. If the church nominates a bishop that the king does not approve, the church loses revenue and the king gains revenue. In poor bishoprics (regions governed by a bishop), the church has time to wait and not lose significant revenue, so the king is likely to approve whomever the church nominates. In wealthy bishoprics, the church suffers huge revenue losses and therefore is more inclined to nominate a bishop that the king prefers.
Then the lightbulb goes off, and this is pretty much the gist of the author’s entire argument for the power and pivotal influence of this often overlooked and relatively obscure agreement. If you were a king who wanted more power over the church and the appointment of bishops, you would want to encourage all your bishoprics to become wealthy. You would encourage free trade, free markets, free commerce, and greater power and autonomy to merchants who could enrich a bishopric. In every other part of the world, there is no such incentive. A ruler doesn’t care if a particular province is rich or poor. Certainly, they could receive greater taxes from richer provinces, but they would also face greater competition and threats from that province as well. With the Concordat of Worms, you would tolerate the greater competition and threats from wealthy merchants of a province, because your greatest threat is not from such wealthy merchants but from the Catholic Church. (Of course, only later in history would the wealthy merchants become the new threat and as such force promote even greater democracy, liberties and freedoms.)
* * *
One could argue that had the Concordat of Worms not be created and signed, the rich bishoprics were already in the process of becoming richer, and the middle bishoprics were already in the process of becoming rich. The Concordat simply acknowledged this reality and formalized it. The church knew that many bishoprics were becoming more wealthier and already less inclined to pick bishops aligned with the church. Instead of kings simply deciding that no bishops would be picked by the church, poor or rich, or deciding to simply part ways with the church, the church decided to cut the losses and agree that they could select the bishops in poor areas, and it was simply acknowledged that the kings would have the power and leverage to determine the bishops in the rich areas. Or this was already in the process, but the Concordat simply added encouragement for wealthy bishoprics to become even wealthier and middle ones to become wealthy ones.
It’s likely that Western and Northern Europe were already in the process of distancing itself and ultimately removing itself from the Catholic Church, and the Concordat of Worms was an inevitability that actually delayed this separation. The Catholic Church could still exert control over the poorer regions of Northwestern Europe, and this is all the Concordat formalized while the wealthier regions, already planning on separating from the church, could freely assign their less religious and more friendly bishops. To this day, there is an association between wealth and secularity and even within the Christian community, the Episcopalians are associated with greater wealth and less religiosity while the Baptists are associated with poverty (especially in minority communities) and more religiosity. Over time, you can imagine that in order to improve one’s status and wealth, one would at least pretend to be less religious. Perhaps in part, the Concordat encouraged people to associate wealth with secularity and poverty with religiosity. Today, wealthy Democrats are notoriously secular while wealthy Republicans only pay lip service to religion in order to pander to their poorer, rural constituents and fellow Republicans.
The book’s argument is like saying that the Revolutionary War was caused by the Stamp Act, Sugar Act, Townshend Acts, or Intolerable Acts. Certainly, these acts exacerbated an existing problem and were used as rallying points for the revolution, but arguably, without these acts, the colonies would have revolted anyway, because it was not taxation that caused the rebellion but rather the existing inequity between British monopolies and colonial businesses competing against them. The colonial businesses had the most to gain by gaining independence from not only Britain but the British monopolies that restricted their business. Parliament was actually more conciliatory than portrayed. They saw the writing on the wall, just as the church saw the writing on the wall when they signed the Concordat. It was not meant to usurp or control secular power as much to simply delay and defer it.
An interesting historical note is how the church responded to the Concordat and its predictable control of wealthy bishoprics by creating or adopting entrepreneurial monastic orders and exempting them from paying bishops and in some cases paying the church directly.
Incredibly, “The church owned about one-third of Europe’s land, and from the late 1400s onward, it was a major exporter of alum, which was essential as a fixer of dyes to wool.”
“The risks and costs for usurers – that is, bankers, Jewish and Muslim moneylenders (who were already treated horribly), and many merchants – had been raised, so naturally, the expected rate of return from money lending had to rise commensurately to reflect the increased risk. The upshot was to make loans scarcer and costlier, thereby slowing economic development and the rise of secular political power relative to what it otherwise would have been.”
Herein perhaps lies the origins of antipathy toward Jews and their successes as bankers. It was rooted in the church’s attempts at outlawing lending or at least restricting it, creating an advantage for early lenders like the Jews over secular European lenders.
“Their [the Knights Templar] influence grew larger as they became powerful and extremely wealthy, especially as they and other Catholic military orders became the great bankers of Europe, exempted by the church from taxes and guaranteed by the church the right to move freely across borders.
That these church knights were created to fight secular power, and not just the Muslim rulers of the Holy Land, is made clear enough by Abbot Bernard of Clairveaux…”
“They shifted from being the pope’s army to becoming one of Europe’s great banking organizations. This was especially true after the church acted to restrict secular access to money by imposing a ban on usury, that is, on making a profit from lending money. While the church endeavored to restrict lay access to funds for construction and investment starting in 1139, it had no shortage of funds for such undertakings on its own part.”
One of the things an undercover must do is remember details. As the author notes, you have to learn to remember names, phone numbers, license plates, names of places, etc. Then you have to dump all the day’s activities into a report with the proper timeline. This is a considerable task when you’re also expected to partake in alcohol at many of these events to keep up appearances. All the while, you’re memorizing everything and everyone around you. The benefit of this is that you can write about it in a book with astounding detail. I’ve considered writing a memoir, but I can’t remember the conversations that took place, the names of places, and I can barely remember the names of people. I often have to rely on Google Maps to tell me where I’ve been and when I was there. I can’t imagine doing all that inebriated. This is one reason why the book really puts you in the places he’s been with the people he’s been with. You really get a sense that you are right there sitting in his skull watching out his eyeballs.
* * *
It’s one thing to be dumb as a door nail, incapable of holding down a normal job, simply being too lazy or a drunk or a drug addict, and then joining a criminal organization where you’re allowed to be a drunk or a drug addict, and you only have to do real albeit criminal work a few hours a day. It’s either that or wind up homeless. But I have a feeling a lot of people join criminal organizations because they think it’s cool, especially a biker gang. They may just start off in a regular biker gang, but then someone gets the hairbrained idea of either turning outlaw or joining an outlaw gang as a supporter or simply ‘patching over’. It’s then that they get in too far over their heads. They may start out simply buying and selling drugs or guns, but then they start to party. They get some woman drunk, and then they gang rape her. Either she’s too drunk to consent or she’s unconscious. Then they have to get into fights with other biker gangs or even punish one of their own. Maybe they wind up killing someone either by accident or on purpose. And on top of that, in order to prove yourself in the outlaw biker gang, you have to do something heinous like killing someone. You may not start out as an alcoholic or drug addict, but in order to deal with a guilty conscience, you become one and then you just double down and do more and more heinous things. You label yourself just a bad dude, and you just no longer care. All the while, your fellow gang members are praising you as one bad mf not to mess with, and that feels good.
It’s the same deal with the military. A lot of people who join the military just can’t cut it in the civilian world. They get into trouble too easily at work and get fired or quit. The military doesn’t even ask for a resume. They could care less if you’ve held a steady job for four years or had a hundred different jobs over four years. They don’t even care if you have no work experience. They don’t even check your school grades. The military is for you in that case. But some people join the military, because they want the glory, the accolades, the ‘thank you for your service’ whenever you’re in uniform, the coolness of shooting a full auto, the coolness of being infantry or a Marine, the parades, the dress uniforms, etc. But then they actually go into combat and they get into a tense, difficult, complicated, messy situation and they either accidentally or purposefully kill a civilian. They see their buddies get their legs blown off or die. Even killing an armed enemy is tough. It’s not so cool anymore. The innocence is gone. They may not start out an alcoholic or drug addict, but the PTSD makes them one. Once you’ve been in the shit, you don’t care about the glory, accolades, coolness anymore. The only ones who truly seem to care about all that are the ones who never saw combat. You realize that if you participate in the parades and patriotic circle jerks, you’re only helping them recruit more naïve, young, innocent people. You put all your uniforms and gear in a box and never open it again.
It’s all just a con. If you don’t have a responsible, caring father to teach you to be a responsible, caring man, you’re vulnerable to con-artists who come along and tell you that to be a man, you lose your individuality, you drink, you do drugs, you treat women like sex objects and trophies, you act hard or else you get labeled gay or a ‘pussy’, and you commit crimes. All the while, you’re just a tool for the bosses, and you get scraps compared to the bosses. A while ago, someone did research on just how much gang members make. Young members actually have to pay dues. Middle members are better off working minimum wage considering the work hazards and long hours. Only those at the very top make the most money. It sounds like a pyramid scheme to me. The camaraderie, the glory, the bragging rights, the coolness, the reputations, the toughness, that’s all just a distraction from the fact that you’ve just joined a predatory pyramid scheme. The bigger the parties and parades, the bigger the scam. You’re taught to prey on rival gangs and non-gang members, but in reality, the leaders are preying on you. The leaders really don’t care about anyone else but themselves. What they call loyalty is just a scam to make you not obedient to the group but really just obedient to the leaders who call all the shots. If you become disobedient to the leaders, they’ll treat you just as bad as they’ll treat rival gang members, non-gang members, and women.
* * *
The author talks about being both good and evil and neither and Jay Dobyns as well as Jay Bird, but in reality, I believe we all have different personalities, and it’s a lot more fluid and ephemeral than people are willing to accept. We need to be flexible as social creatures. Solitary creatures can focus on being one thing to itself, but to live successfully in a group, you need to accept different tasks and roles, and that depends on whether certain tasks and roles have already been filled or not. I always look at high schools and wonder why they all seem to have about the same proportion of jocks, nerds, geeks, popular kids, rebels, stoners, and dropouts. Even in the most elite private schools, you’ll always be able to fill out your basketball, lacrosse, soccer, and volleyball rosters. If these kids went to public school, you’d wonder if they’d even bother joining a sports team and getting no playing time.
If you live in a social group, you need to be flexible to fill certain roles. Sometimes, you’ll be called upon to protect the group, or you’ll need to be a good foragers or someone who makes and maintains the shelter or someone who takes care of the horses. Even inside your own family, you take on different roles depending on what roles have been taken by older siblings. If the eldest sibling decides to be a bookworm and reclusive, someone needs to step up to be the protector and tough sibling. One sibling needs to help make peace and be the comic relief. While much of our personality is inherited (as proven with genetic twins that are raised in two different environments), I also believe a considerable amount of our personality depends on our social group and the roles that we fill for it. When I’m with a bunch of friends, and one is very talkative, I don’t talk as much, but when I’m around a bunch of quiet friends, all the sudden, I find myself being the talkative one, the life of the party.
In our minds, we think we have one pretty static, unified personality. When we do things that support this personality, we remember that. When we do things that don’t suit the personality, we forget about it or diminish it. For instance, if we think we’re shy, and on one occasion we become super talkative and outgoing, we just think it’s a strange fluke and ignore it. People who suffer from dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personalities) can more clearly see the different personalities inside them, one is super hostile and defensive, one is more reasonable, one is young and innocent, another is older and wiser. All these personalities are jostling for position in our minds, and I think it’s actually unhealthy to believe that we only have one fixed personality, because this causes cognitive dissonance, just like when we think we’re mostly rational, consistent thinkers when we’re not or when we think we’re above-average drivers when we’re not.
If we accepted the reality that we possess multiple personalities, that our personalities are fluid and dynamic, we are much more likely to be at peace with ourselves. We are conflicted when we do or say things that don’t seem to match our fixed, static personality. I read a book about soldiers in wars, Acts of War, and it stated that the difference between acting heroically and cowardly is not as fixed as people think. You’re not either a hero or a coward. It could just depend on the time of the day, your diet, your mood, what happened to you yesterday. Just think of the times you feel like working out and the times you don’t. It often depends on random things like the time of day, the weather, what you ate, how you feel, whether you had a stressful day at work, etc.
Sometimes you can be and feel very heroic to the point of feeling invincible. Other times, you can feel very vulnerable and weak. It’s sheer luck that at the right time and the right place, someone felt heroic and strong and did something truly heroic. It’s also sheer luck that at the wrong time and the wrong place, someone felt vulnerable and weak, and they acted cowardly or hurt someone who did not deserve it. It’s not crazy to believe that you have many different personalities and capabilities, and that your personalities change and shift over time and even by the hour of the day. It’s crazy, actually, to believe that there is only one you, and that you is static, constant, and unchangeable. I always love the advice, don’t make big decisions on the spur of the moment or when you’re angry, exhausted, anxious, drunk, or even having a great time. Take the time to confer with all your personalities. A lot of times, when you let an idea stew, one of your personalities will identify a serious downside, usually the personality that is more cautious, meticulous, and takes long-term consequences into account. That personality may be dormant when you’re drunk or anxious. At the same time, for taking on more daunting and challenging tasks, sometimes it’s your more impulsive and adventurous personality that overrides the cautious one and motivates you to go ahead. Just as a good leader takes into consideration and listens to their entire team before making an executive decision, a smart person would consider and listen to all their different personalities before making a decision. And it may even be a misnomer to call it ‘personality’. Of course, it would be unwieldy to call it ‘unique loci of distinct attitudes, feelings, priorities, biases, and capabilities’. The stigma of ‘multiple personality disorder’ makes one think you’re crazy if you admit to the presence of multiple personalities in your mind.
In essence, what makes humans so potent is not just their intelligence or their social skills but their ‘personality’ or behavioral plasticity. In fact, we are the greatest actors in the animal kingdom. We need to be. When you read this book, you wonder how in hell could the author be so courageous to pull this off. It reminds me of a predatory caterpillar that acquires the scent of an ant to be taken into an ant colony as a queen larvae. Imagine being surrounded in an ant colony and should your scent fail you, they will all kill you. While the author does have teams standing by to try to rescue him, likely, he or some of the other informants would probably be dead. The rescue team would only be arresting the perps after the fact.
But everyone acts, not just informants. Every single legit gang member acts in order to fit into the gang. They start off as prospects and act the part by being subservient, docile, and obedient. They convince themselves that this is not their true personality. They are nobody’s bitch, but they are willing to ‘act’ the part to become a full member. It’s just a hazing, initiation ritual, they convince themselves. Then they become a full member and continue to the act the part by acting tough, talking tough, degrading women, putting one another down in a joking way, etc. When you join any group, especially tight-knit criminal groups, you have to put on an act for them. This is why it is so difficult to find informants. Everyone is acting, not just the informants. And in the process of acting, like a method actor, the person often gets confused. I’m sure there was a part of the author that truly felt camaraderie and kinship with the other bikers. He also felt antipathy and antagonistic toward other biker members who were douchey, but that wasn’t just because he was law enforcement. Bikers can feel antipathy and antagonistic toward other biker members, but they just know better not to show it and for the sake of group harmony and their own safety, they keep it to themselves. We’re all Oscar-worthy actors.
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We grow up in a society that tells us that some people are just bad, that they deserve to be punished and ostracized. In reality, they just had a bad upbringing. All babies start off with the exceptional ability to be productive, kind, compassionate, self-confident, and brave. But if you’re abused and/or neglected, you start to feel like you’re unlovable and useless. You then believe that people who are unlovable and useless are bad and must be punished. You fill the role. You do mean and antisocial things for attention and also because you feel that you’re unlovable and useless. You believe your personality is static and fixed. You believe that you are a bad person. You do things that you think a bad person does. The way to fix this problem is not to just punish people who do bad things. The better way to fix the problem is to help heal these people and make them feel like they can be loved and feel useful. One of the best therapies for prison inmates is taking care of animals. When they take care of animals, they feel that the animals love them, and they feel useful taking care of these animals.
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The author is honest enough to admit that he takes Hydroxycut, a legal stimulant that you can buy on Amazon. Speaking from personal experience, your body can take only so many uppers. I’ve used methylphenidate (AKA Ritalin), and it no longer works at the same dosage, and I’m not stupid enough to keep increasing my dosage. As you get older, your body also becomes less adept at processing drugs and alcohol. Not only does your body simply wear down with age, and your physical performance naturally goes down, but your liver can only take so much abuse. You essentially get one shot in life at burning the candle at both ends, and then you just wind up old and fatigued. Throughout history, warriors have used artificial chemicals or alcohol to energize and/or disinhibit them. The Nazis used speed to enable their Blitzkrieg, and the Allies joined in with Benzedrine. The US military still uses Provigil and Modafinil stimulants. Of course, the military doesn’t care about long-term side-effects. They want the maximum physical performance in the shortest period of time when you’re an effective, young, physically capable person. Becoming a drug addict or a burned out, old man doesn’t worry them or keep them awake at night.
Fortunately, the author was smart enough to know that burning himself out on Hydroxycut was not a good idea and went cold turkey. Of course, this is what he says. You have to acquire a healthy amount of skepticism when you’re reading memoirs. Nobody likes to admit doing things that make them look bad or hypocritical. (Dennis Hof who ran the Moonlite BunnyRanch was perhaps one of the most self-aware autobiographers I ever read especially considering the fact that he was a master salesperson and salespeople are notoriously not self-aware. He even allowed other people including ex’s to write a couple of unflattering pages in his own memoir!)
As you read this book, you have to wonder what could possibly motivate someone to put himself through so much. The author notes that his female partner had quit smoking before doing undercover but then started smoking again and gained 30 pounds. It speaks to the incredible stress of the job. It’s like having two bosses and two jobs. Not only are you working for the biker club, and the biker club bosses are your bosses, but you’re also working for the ATF and all your bosses there. Both are probably two of the most toxic places to work in the US. On top of all that, there’s the ever present specter of being found out and tortured and then killed.
The answer is dopamine. It sounds like the author became addicted to his job, and acquiring more and more evidence to make a larger and larger case drove him to unimaginable lengths and incredibly long hours of work. On top of all this, he was expected to drink a lot. Imagine all his hangovers. The Hydroxycut probably helped him stay lucid during his binge drinking. Personally, I used to take Ritalin while drinking which unfortunately allowed me to drink more and stay out longer, but over time, you need higher and higher doses of Ritalin, and I knew I wasn’t going down that path. But when you’re on dopamine, you’re willing to do anything for another bump of it, and the author demonstrates that he’s willing to neglect his own family, and his relationship with his family deteriorates as a result only adding to the stress. But I think everyone knows the power of dopamine when you’re working on a project that you are obsessive about completing. You don’t even notice the urge to piss, eat, or even drink, or sleep for that matter. All the sudden, you can endure incredible human feats, because you want the project complete, but in reality, what you really want is a another hit of dopamine, it’s that addictive.
And it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. We get serotonin and oxytocin from hanging out with friends and loved ones. What would ever motivate us to go on long and arduous hunts or treks if there is no immediate reward of eating? Nature needs a solution to this problem, and the solution is dopamine. We envision an outcome, the taking down of a prey or getting over a mountain or through a canyon. Our body gives us little bumps of dopamine when we make some progress, so we start to get addicted to it, and we keep on going despite the lack of food, rest, or even an opportunity to take a piss break or sleep. If we can out-endure the animal running away from us, we win, and our children get this crazy dopamine drug running through their veins. The same can be said of prey. They probably also get dopamine from outrunning us, so every time they create distance from their tormentor, they get a small bump of dopamine. It can’t be just fear that motivates them. We all know now that fear causes the circulation of cortisol which damages us and undermines our immunity. The last thing we need when running from prey is getting sick and tired. When kids play tag, running from someone gives them an ecstatic thrill. This is not just fear but a rush of adrenaline and if this game were to go on for hours, the kids would probably get dopamine too.
Dopamine simply gets us high, and we can get addicted to it and forget about all the other pain and suffering in our body. Unfortunately, we also lose interest in the pain and suffering of anyone else. We just laser focus on our next hit of dopamine. It’s a double-edged sword of course, because at some point, we do need to take care of our bodies and eat and sleep and piss and reconcile with our friends and loved ones who support us and improve our survival odds. Dopamine is stronger than serotonin or oxytocin, but as social animals, we need to maintain our relationships to survive. Unfortunately, as this may have been the case for 200,000 years and millions of years for our social primate ancestors, it is no longer the case today. Today, through 12 years of schooling, we are taught not to socialize, to talk to friends in class, not to even consider the teacher your friend lest you be called a brown-noser. We are taught to be fear-avoiders and dopamine-chasers. We study to avoid getting bad grades which mean winding up in lower-paying, undesirable jobs. We also learn to become dopamine addicts and only get highs from completing our homework or preparing for an exam. As a result, we are becoming less and less social and more and more narcissistic.
A big caveat is that in order to make you a dopamine addict, you must exercise a great deal of autonomy or at least the belief that you are acting autonomously and not out of fear of being punished. As mentioned above, fear is toxic and undermines your immunity and long-term health. The most common coping mechanism is eating which simply makes you overweight and less healthy. In order for you to become a dopamine addict, you have to believe in your goals. This is why I think modern society doesn’t want too many dopamine addicts, because while they become incredibly productive workers, they also demand a considerable amount of independence and autonomy, and that’s just not happening. The author had considerable conflict with the higher-ups at the ATF, because of his reputation as a feisty, independent character. His bosses likely believed that he had gone ‘native’ and started to identify with and collaborate with the outlaw bikers.
I’m sure a long time ago when humans domesticated animals, they realized that fear was a powerful motivational and control tool. I’m also sure, many realized that caring for and bonding with animals could also be used as a potent motivational and control tool. But of course, if you’re ultimately eating the animal, you would not want to care too much for them and bond too much with them. It must then have occurred to humans that they could also domesticate and exploit the labor of other humans. And likewise, they realized fear was a potent tool as well as caring for and bonding with them. Of course, if they were ultimately exploiting the human and in some cases, sending them off to battle to die, then caring for and bonding with them would not have been wise. I then imagine at some point, people realized that by setting goals and getting people to adopt those goals, they could get these people to work tirelessly to reach these goals without the need for using fear or bonding. But the only caveat here is that they would have to keep their hands off the person or else that person would not feel in charge of and in control of their own goals and addiction to reaching them. So long as the person’s goals benefited the ruler, they were allowed their autonomy to work independently, but you can imagine the temptation to punish, discipline, and threaten them for being too independent with varying acts of insubordination, disrespect, lack of submissiveness, and the threat of them becoming too assertive, too ambitious, and then threatening the rulers themselves. And this is exactly what happened with the author and his higher-ups at ATF.
I read the author’s other book, Catching Hell about his conflicts with the ATF while and after he was an undercover biker. I thought that book would be about his career as an undercover biker, but it was this book. I was impressed with how well he wrote Catching Hell and how enjoyable it was to read. The problem with these two books is that Jay Dobyns doesn’t look like a good writer. He looks like an illiterate biker without much going on upstairs. The author is not a unique biker, (besides the obvious fact that he’s an undercover cop) in that he went to college and had good parents. In other words, he has a good head on his shoulders. This is not to say people who didn’t go to college and didn’t have good parents don’t have a good head on their shoulders but if you were to gamble on it, you’d gamble on people who go to college and have good parents. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but you actually should and do most of the time. Surely, there are exceptions, and this book is an example of that, but if you saw someone looking like this on the cover of his book, you would correctly assume the author is not very intelligent, entertaining, or ethical, and it would read like a narcissistic criminal bragging about doing criminal things without any consideration for the wellbeing of others. Of course, you don’t see a lot of books written by people who look like the author. He really does a great job of looking like a typical if not poster boy biker.
The great irony here is that if you wanted to catch an undercover, you certainly don’t look for the guy with a good head on his shoulders who doesn’t do a lot of drugs, booze, or womanizing. It’s almost cliché to say that criminals do drugs, excessive booze, and womanizing. In any criminal organization, it’s basically a bunch of immature boys acting out their immature boy fantasies. Even if you’re a college-educated stockbroker, if you’re exploiting your clients and possibly committing unethical or unlawful things, sure enough, you go out partying and do cocaine, excessive booze, and womanize. This is why I think frats and the military are molded after criminal organizations. They are taking an individual and stripping them of their individual identity and replacing it with a group mentality. That group mentality is then directed and orchestrated from above by a few people who receive most all the benefits. The payoff is that the lower ranks get bragging rights of being a part of some ‘badass’ group, and the folks at the top ply them with drugs, alcohol, and women to keep them obedient and enable their bragging. Now, you’re thinking, a guy can get drugs and booze without joining a club, fraternity, or the military, but what about women?
Guys who join groups that destroy their individuality and then commit crimes or at least ethical violations on others are often broken, damaged, beaten boys. Their parents are effectively too distressed and side-tracked (whether through simple poverty or addiction to drugs or alcoholism) to properly take care of them. Their parents probably project their own insecurities and self-hatred on their children, insulting, abusing, and neglecting them. There is very little to no expression of love or kindness. The kids grow up believing that any honest expression of love or kindness is bullshit, that someone only truly loves you if they insult, abuse, or neglect them. They’ve convinced themselves as children that this is how their parents have shown their love. They’ve gaslit themselves. They can’t fathom the truth, the fact that their parents are too distressed and distracted to really care about and love their children. Their insults, abuse, and neglect is not in fact an expression of love but rather an expression of their own distress and distraction. They’ve effectively emotionally, mentally, and in some cases, physically abandoned their children. Yet, unfortunately, it is better for the child to believe in fairy tales and fantasies than the truth. They will gaslight themselves into believing (at least on an unconscious level) that their parents love them, and insulting, abusing, and neglecting them is an expression of that love, and to show love to someone means you should insult, abuse, and neglect them.
Unfortunately, girls become groupies for the same reason that boys join criminal and unethical groups. Girls who grew up with insulting, abusive, and neglectful parents also believe that these are expressions of love. What better place to find these kinds of guys than some dangerous, criminal, unethical group? Either that or stripping. When these damaged and broken women hang out with guys who have a good head on their shoulders, they don’t understand the expressions of true kindness and love. They think it’s a trick, a setup. They’d rather hang with guys who are outright insulting, abusive, and neglectful. This is familiar territory to them. Unfortunately, if they were sexually abused as a kid, they will expect sexual abuse as an adult. If they were not, they will not expect men to sexually abuse them in addition to insulting and neglecting them.
It is unfortunate when the author relays how women, even attractive ones, fawned over bikers. It doesn’t make any sense to the rest of us. Why would you want to hook up with an unreliable, criminal, dangerous, and possibly drug-addicted or alcoholic man? What kind of a father would this make? What kind of a husband would this make? Many times, the women would only hang out with the bikers for drugs, and having sex with one or getting gang-banged would be the acceptable price to pay for access to free or cheap drugs. Because the author has a daughter, I can only imagine how heartbreaking it is for him, and he acknowledges this a number of times. The horrible secret about attractive women who put themselves in these dangerous and horrible circumstances is that it is likely their attractiveness was exploited as a child by a stepfather or boyfriend of a single mother. Certainly, they could get a decent boyfriend who has a steady, lucrative job as an accountant, lawyer, doctor, or insurance salesperson, but this is not familiar territory. They interpret love as insults, abuse, and neglect. On top of that, their lawyer or doctor boyfriend would likely prohibit them from doing drugs as it would endanger their reputation and careers.
The irony of organized crime is that the only ones who are truly trustworthy and can handle greater responsibilities and have a good head on their shoulders are probably undercovers. The ones who are untrustworthy, who drink until they pass out, get in fights, do drugs, and screw unconscious women are obviously not undercovers, but you wouldn’t be able to trust them with shit, and they are definitely not leadership material.
It’s actually astonishing biker gangs get anything done with most of their members high on drugs and/or drunkards. This is probably why the author was appreciated so much. Any organization that revels in drugs and drunkenness as well as treating women as trophies, scores, notches, hanging out at strip clubs is pretty much indicative that they are criminal if not simply predatory and unethical. This simply attracts immature men who likely did not grow up with responsible, caring fathers. They have no clue what it means to be a man. They think it’s all about danger, violence, breaking the law, and promiscuous sex and the objectification of women, viewing women only as sex objects and things to show off and brag about.
I think of reading books about Wall Street traders, con-artists, tech bros, it’s all the same. It’s almost like there’s a frat boy script. It’s actually cultish, and all cults seem to follow the same brainwashing and mind control scripts. You start off by losing your individual identity, hence, the nicknames. You are forced to swear your allegiance to the organization, and any sign of infidelity or disrespect has serious and violent consequences. In many male organizations, there’s almost a homoerotic element where you’re stripped naked and forced to perform any number of humiliating acts. A long time ago, I read the Tolstoy short story, “After the Ball” which depicted a deserter who is flogged by his comrades and vows never to join the civil or military service where he believes individuals are brainwashed into violent, cruel automatons. That story affected me for years.
If you’re a young man who was not raised by a father or who endured an abusive father or stepfather, you don’t know what a real man is all about. You’re exploited by media which tries to convince you that a real man smokes cigarettes, drinks whisky, parties, fights, has promiscuous sex with gorgeous models, rides a motorcycle, and breaks the law whenever he feels like it. I love the lyric by Cake, “Excess ain’t rebellion. You’re drinking what they’re selling. Your self-destruction doesn’t hurt them. Your chaos won’t convert them. They’re so happy to rebuild it. You’ll never really kill it.”
I have this sneaking suspicion that you’re just being set up for failure. If you want to rebel against the system, your best shot is doing well, getting educated, saving money, and organizing and rallying people. In order to do this, you need to be trustworthy, dependable, ethical, and persistent. What better way to undermine this by telling young people that if you want to rebel against the system, you drop out of school, you do drugs, you become a raging alcoholic, you party, you engage in all kinds of unethical and dangerous activities, you ruin your life, you get in trouble with the law, and you end up in prison or dead. All the while, the system is laughing at you.
If you want to know what it takes to be a real man, or a real adult for that matter, it’s called character. You hone your character so you’re always doing the right thing no matter how hard or isolated you feel. You don’t surrender your individuality to a frat, a cult, a criminal organization, the military, etc. While you don’t want to be self-centered, there is definitely a healthy balance where you look out for both yourself and your group or club. And when your group or group leader tells you to do something you feel is inappropriate, unethical, or unlawful, you should have the ability to say no. Any organization you belong to should be egalitarian and allow any member, no matter how young or new to discuss, debate, or dissent. If you can’t do this or feel discouraged from doing this, you’re in the wrong organization, one that is more predatory not only on outsiders but also on insiders in a pyramid scheme where those on top get all the perks and benefits, and those on bottom do all the unpleasant work and have the fewest rights and benefits. If that sounds like the society we live in today, like America, then you’re just realizing what a sham our society and America has become.
Never since the Roaring 20’s has there been such a wealth gap between the top 1% and the rest of us and never has there been such a great assault on the middle class. During the 1950’s, the US was basking in the glow of global supremacy, and with all the transferred wealth from Europe which needed fuel, supplies, ammo, and weapons for war (wealth they happened to steal from the rest of the world), everyone’s standard of living was raised. Back then, without a college education, you could get a blue collar factory job and buy a car and a house, and your wife didn’t even have to work. As Europe and Japan recovered and started to compete with US industry, as the US started to open its borders to poorer people from non-European countries, the rich and powerful decided to stop dumping wealth upon the rest of Americans. Wages and benefits were cut. Unions were broken up. It’s almost as if the elite European-Americans said that wealth was only reserved for other European-Americans. But you couldn’t just cut wages and benefits for immigrants, you had to cut it for everyone including blue collar European-Americans. If the US had kept its border walls up like Japan, one wonders if there would have been such drastic cuts in wages and benefits. In Japan, the elite Japanese seem to believe in more equitably sharing wealth among other Japanese.
But, besides a brief period of egalitarianism in the 50s (excluding African-Americans and other non-Europeans of course), we have always lived in a predatory society. Just as mobsters and biker gangs demand your allegiance, every morning, children are forced to pledge allegiance to the US flag. Later in life, they adorn the flag to their vehicles (just like bikers go around wearing their ‘cuts’ or vests) and go driving around proudly American, oblivious to the fact that the country really doesn’t care about them. The country moved all their jobs overseas and became a police and military state where they are now employed as prison guards, law enforcement, or soldiers. Their only consolation is the color guard that marches out before ball games that makes them feel as if their country even cares about them anymore. The color guard, of course, is a distraction for the poor treatment of veterans and 6000 veteran suicides each year.
So the rebels who want to change the system are all drugged out, drunk, suffering from STDs, in prison, or dead. The problem with people who have a good head on their shoulders and work hard is that they probably have good parents who loved them. They were raised not to be disobedient, and they usually had no reason to question their parents, their parents’ motives, the system, etc. As far as they’re concerned, the system works well for them. They probably went to college and have a lucrative career. Never mind that at every turn the elite parasites are extracting wealth from them or simply not compensating them appropriately. So long as they’re earning six-figures, they don’t view themselves as victims of anything and hence have no reason to rebel or question the system. Most likely, and most unfortunately, they vote Democrat or Republican, just to be on the safe side and stop any radical rabblerouser from getting in office and shaking things up. In the end, you wonder, who is left to rebel? In the end, the only ones to rebel are the rare ones who are raised by parents who encourage their children to ask questions, form opinions independently, think critically, and above all, avoid becoming a drug addict, drunk, partier, womanizer, and law breaker.
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