RFD: Neoreactionary T-shirt

People have been kicking around the idea of a secret signal or handshake for a while.  It’s a fun thought, but impractical for a society of a few hundred at most scattered over a world of seven billion.  I meet a bunch of new people every day: am I going to use some hammed-up codephrase for each?

No, this is ridiculous.  What we really need is a t-shirt.  Something that doesn’t look terrible, is inoffensive, but identifiable to those who know what to look for.  I may be wary of revealing my identity on the Internet, where ten thousand badly-informed (but informed!) lynch mobs are but a click away, but on the street?  No biggie.

The thing I like about a T-shirt is that it’s suited to the kind of thing NRx is.  Decide to drop out?  Just stop wearing the thing or, for instant effect, put on a jacket.  It’s a light commitment the way a blog is: a bit more money and associated with your actual person, but not nearly as explicit or available.

So: a design.  I think looking for a logo is a bad idea.  First, I have no authority to decide such.  Second, the goal is to signal affiliation/awareness rather than membership (as in this part of the interwebs awareness is membership).

The first idea that springs to mind is the creature linked here—just without the text, or the gamer.

Another idea is a stylized portrait of Carlyle—or for that matter, Moldbug (or, of course, Cthullhu).

If any of this too adolescent for you (if you giggle with schadenfreude at too many things, you lack love in your heart and need to repent), what about a pretty design?  Both traditional past  (Maybe we just need to be walking around wearing DaVinci) and aggressive future (the kind you or your parents believed in in 1969) would do.

In any case, the key is:inoffensive and inexplicit in person, publicly available on the web.

EDIT:  Ha!  More to come.

Yet More on Ambiguity

Have I hammered this topic enough?  Probably not, because I keep missing.  But not by a lot.

Last month G at Jr. Ganymede wrote an essay that spoke of vices as distorted virtues.

The diagram explains the relationship better than I can in words, so I will simply steal it, and throw myself upon the mercy of the Court.:

and another:

and another:

(The “Virtue That Has No Name” is the quality of advocating standards that you do not meet—not to seem holy, but because the standard must be advocated.  More here.)

The point of this post is not to highlight the relationships between the specific virtues and vices, but to show that this kind of relationship exists and is in fact general.  Pick one of those cycles above and try and put it in a soundbite.  It won’t fit.

“Nell,” the Constable continued, indicating through his tone of voice that the lesson was concluding, “the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people—and this is true whether or not they are well-educated—is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.”

~Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age