Yesterday I made the comment "everything is collapsing underneath" though there's context etc. I think the better way to say it. "Is everything falling apart for the USA?" Yes indeed. Most other countries have problems.
Sure Sri Lanka has the same problems. Sure the middle east just went through the same problems and some states are still enduring civil war. Though from what I can tell it's mostly the USA in this 'falling apart' situation. Canada is certainly not far behind.
>“The story of Babel,” Haidt writes, “is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
The political polarization starting pre-existed social media. This started late 90s or for sure early 2000s with GWBush. Bush knew something from his father's reign. He could play identity as a victim. So he would pretend to be a yokel and when the elites would make fun... it told every yokel that Bush was the only option. Obviously he never passed laws or tried to 'fix' something for yokels. It was shallow identity politics but identity politics breeds more identity politics.
The democrats then needed identity politics of obama. It's an inevitable scenario, 'first black president' will eventually happen in history and inevitably it would be toxic with identity politics. The rest is history, Trump is a symptom. Biden is a symptom.
>By “here” I mean a time when a big change in information technology has implications for social structure too dramatic to play out without turbulence. In Nonzero I discussed a number of such thresholds, including the invention of writing and the invention of the printing press.
Blaming social media is not legitimate in my opinion; social media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA falling apart is free and open discussions between the camps. This is what Elon is planning to do with twitter.
He's a billionaire and will be the world's first trillionaire, ONLY if the USA doesn't fall apart. He has a vested incentive/interest to help make this not happen.
>One grievance that drove support for Donald Trump in 2016 was that American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in other countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland.
Which is for sure true. The reality is that they are still the same team. You can enjoy F1 over Nascar. You have to still realize you're on the same team. When the left-wing attacks the right-wing. You can't take actions that harms your own team. Eventually that team breaks and here we are.
>American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in other countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland
>When the left-wing attacks the right-wing
This is part of the problem. When you casually define the left as "coastal elites who are out of touch" and the right as "Americans in the heartland who are uncared for", you are taking a real problem and reframing it as "all left-wingers vs all right-wingers". You are making people feel attacked who are not in the group you are trying to criticize. People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US lately).
It's interesting the consequences of this as well. There are policies being changed without a mindset of urban vs rural. Where a policy that makes sense in a urban point of view is catastrophic to rural communities. "If you think the world is overpopulated, leave the city."
Political policies like carbon tax for example disproportionately harm rural people. Some dude living in downtown toronto taking the subway is basically getting a pay cheque from the government at the expense of rural folks who must drive a low mpg pickup truck. What you think farming can be done in a econobox? https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/28/udder-disgrace-cops-find-cow-...
In fact, if you know a bloc of people support your policies and another doesn't. Figuring out of a system which transfers wealth to your supporters at the expense of your political opponents is an ideal system.
The problem though is that we in a country are the same team. Attacking 1 side is never beneficial. Urban folks attacking farmers with carbon taxes? Ok well how's that food inflation working out? Attacking oil workers with carbon taxes? How about the gas prices?
>People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US lately).
It's interesting as well to imagine how to solve this in the USA. Lets say Elon fails or even makes this worse and he deletes twitter. It just doesnt exist anymore.
How do you bring both sides back together without blood being shed?
You cant do nothing, it's actively becoming worse right now. Act now or else.
It's certainly not going to be solved by more censorship and removing free speech. In fact, censorship is a new thing. Free speech has been around for plenty long to know it's not causing it. My hypothetical also assumes reduction in censorship by elon failed.
So as president happytoexplain of the independent party. How do you bridge the divide? How do you bring people back together?
You might try to go nationalism. Tell everyone they are Team America, that the fight isnt with each other. Build some foreign enemy for people to rail against. At the same time go around ending all the wars the USA involved in. End wars that the USA arent even involved in. Reduce tension, reduce war exhaustion. Make sure people's economic situation is as good as possible because of high correlation between violence and economic situation. Reduce the poor mindset in general, tackle it directly.
> This is what Elon is planning to do with twitter.
The only things Elon is planning to do with twitter is to silence his critics, become a Rupert Murdoch style figure, and keep manipulating stock prices.
If it makes anyone feel any better, Musk's Twitter acquisition reminds me of Buffett's acquisition of Berkshire Hathaway -- he did it because he was assmad and is likely to take a bath on it.
I’m not convinced social media will fix things. IF we could have conversations with each other, and discuss nuance, it would help. However, it’s turned into a tool to just shout knee-jerk memes at each other and demonify the other side. I don’t see any honest real discussions happening among people who disagree. It’s just fanning the flames that will burn us all.
Elons "graph" only shows the left moving away, like they were running away from the globalists lovin satanist-migrants. Or maybe just climate scientists?
This entire "blaming wokeism" is just identity tribalism form the other side. How come you fail to realize ...
Well, the big reason I'm skeptical is that the group of people who don't like "wokeism" seem to have pretty diverse identities. It's hard for me to see many similarities between irreligious business magnate Elon Musk, vaguely Catholic political blogger Andrew Sullivan, and my full time Baptist preacher cousin-in-law - I'm not sure I could identify any other policy question they all agree on.
I don't want to necessarily defend "woke" as a term, but if you pinned me down, I'd say the difference between woke and left is that Noam Chomsky isn't woke. He thinks free speech is very important and signed onto a famous letter on the topic of "cancel culture" and why it's bad. I don't think he has or would identify as anti-woke, but the general phenomenon of ideological capture in mass communications is something he's always talked about and opposed at length.
So you agree with me, that left and woke is not the same thing.
Whats odd thou is, (1) there is no clear definition of wokeism, like its an arbitrary stereotype used by demagogues and (2), that woke is often displayed on the other side of right/conservative. This makes it a strong indicator of propaganda. A surface, people can project their negative emotions to, which is another red flag in terms of populism. Even you used it indirectly, to refer to your peers "not liking woke", which is why i asked.
I am not defending wokeism too. One core value of the left is equality and solidarity. When you define wokeism as some LGBTQ-stuff, it would be just a subset of these values. So being woke does not make you left.
This is my answer to, what is the difference between woke and left.
On one level, sure, I'm definitely with you. The term "woke" is vague, subject to toxic stereotyping, and it'd be nice if people didn't use it.
But I don't think we can overlook the pressures that push people towards it. The problem is that a lot of movements that get grouped under "woke" self-identify with vacuously positive labels that can't be negated. If I go around telling people "anti-racism is bad", they're going to think I mean "racism is good", and they're not going to believe me when I clarify that I'm referring to specific policy ideas promoted in books such as Ibram X. Kendi's famous How to Be an Antiracist. Unless you're talking to people who are so politically engaged you can name-drop specific authors to start with, I'm not sure what term other than "woke" you could use.
I was about to write "The Problem we both have is mislabeling" but then i realized that we dont have the same problem.
From my perspective, conservatives/rights often stand out with blatant and harmful falsehoods. Even in your last post is a central self contradiction.
>movements that get grouped under "woke" self-identify with vacuously positive labels that can't be negated
>If I go around telling people "anti-racism is bad", they're going to think I mean "racism is good"
Looks like your "anti-racism is bad" statement is not meant to be negated. I think, what you meant is "racism is bad but what you are doing is too", which, from my perspective, is not equivalent to "anti-racism is bad". Your mistake here is, that you use their "racism"-label and invert it, to make it suit you. By doing so, you reduce the conversation to labels and discard similarities between you (which is actually the most harmful part).
A slight difference in phrasing is deciding if i agree or disagree with you. Is it my fault or yours?
"Anti-racism is bad" is meant to be negated. It would be totally reasonable for someone to respond by saying "well, I actually think anti-racism is good, and here's why".
There's a risk of labels getting in the way, no doubt. But there's a lot of things that seem straightforwardly impossible to reason about without labels. How could we discuss what the abstract principles of race relations in the US should be without identifying and naming the major strains of thought on that topic?
Black people were discriminated in the US from the beginning. This discrimination continued long after civil rights reforms in public and private institutions.
Even if you could magically eliminate racism in every human brain on earth with a snap of your fingers, the socio-econimic factors, inherited from the beginning would continue to be disadvantageous for blacks. So the racism back then, even when not present in minds today, would persist. This is called systemic racism, because we discriminate indirectly, not by skin color but by education, vocabulary, human capital in general. And on top, racism will of course prevail in minds.
From that, you can easily advocate for some sort of compensation, some kind of counter discrimination, anti-racism.
I find that term troublesome too, because you actually asking for support for all poor people, not just blacks, but i would never call it a ideological label and bad, because i can see the reason behind it. Using it as a label and associating it with (group) identity is unfortunate but not my mistake.
"woke" has a clear definition and origin in black activism. Like a lot of concepts from black activism, it became co-opted by well meaning white liberals, encompassing many other forms of progressive activism and eventually became more about virtue signalling than productive activism, much less black allyship.
Then, like so many other progressive and left-activist terms, it got co-opted again and inverted by the right into a general pejorative, indicating nothing other than mockery and caricature of the left. But it definitely came from somewhere and it at least used to mean something.
It's fundamentally a difference about the economy and the value of material change vs. cultural change. The left proper wants liberation for all oppressed groups, including the largest, the working class. Leftists recognize that groups that are more marginalized under capitalism/imperialism (national/ethnic minorities, etc.) will benefit disproportionately, but want a rising tide for everyone (except the bourgeoisie). That is to say, leftists have a commitment to intersectionality and the liberation of those with marginalized identities, but the fundamental, sine-qua-non thing that makes one a leftist is anti-capitalism.
The woke "left" is different; it's largely a phenomenon of the petit bourgeoisie, and is not opposed to capitalism, or oppression more generally; the woke instead want representative members of generally marginalized groups to be proportionally represented in the existing power structures, without any significant change to those power structures. The reason the woke come off as so strident and belligerent is that membership in the professional-managerial class (PMC) is increasingly precarious, and US educational/cultural institutions overproduce people with the qualifications for entry into/maintenance of that class position, relative to the dwindling size of that class.
> Blaming social media is not legitimate in my opinion; social media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA falling apart is free and open discussions between the camps. This is what Elon is planning to do with twitter.
I’m skeptical that he can fundamentally change the incentives that make social media amplify extremist views over moderate views. “The other side is terrible” will always get more engagement than “we should work together”, even with validated identities.
>I’m skeptical that he can fundamentally change the incentives that make social media amplify extremist views over moderate views.
I'm skeptical that someone who unironically uses the phrase "woke mindvirus" has any such intent. There's a reason right-wing accounts are flooding the platform now and everyone else is running for the hills, and it isn't because Elon makes both sides equally welcome or unwelcome. He's clearly picked a side.
I'd really encourage you to take a step back and think about how deeply the attitude of extreme-vs-extreme conflict pervades this comment. You say "everyone else is running for the hills", but I don't think you'd claim that 100% or even 25% of left-wing Twitter users have left the platform today. Is it true that the "wokeness" debate is such a big issue you can't use a social media platform run by someone who doesn't agree with your stance, or have the incentives of social media tricked you into seeing it as a totalizing conflict where nobody can agree to disagree?
>You say "everyone else is running for the hills", but I don't think you'd claim that 100% or even 25% of left-wing Twitter users have left the platform today.
Sorry, I forgot where I was posting for a second. It was an idiom, not an attempt at a mathematical proof.
The point is that only one side suddenly feels unwelcome and the other suddenly feels very welcome.
>Is it true that the "wokeness" debate is such a big issue you can't use a social media platform run by someone who doesn't agree with your stance,
No. I just don't look forward to the flood of edgelord Nazi shitposters, bots and harassment I predict Elon (and, Trump's probable reinstatement) will draw to the platform, nor do I particularly want to use a platform whose owner considers my views to be akin to a plague. I will, as long as it remains feasible to block accounts I have no interest in.
>or have the incentives of social media tricked you into seeing it as a totalizing conflict where nobody can agree to disagree?
I didn't take over Twitter because I felt it needed to be liberated from the "woke mindvirus." Elon is bringing the totalizing conflict, I just want to read my feed in peace.
What do you think Voat, Gab, Parler, Rumble, WeMe, Truth Social, Gettr and numerous other "alternative" platforms formed in the last few years were all about? Conservative safe spaces are a whole market segment now.
I will grant you it must be difficult trying to voice your opinion as a conservative in a liberal space, but there are countless examples of conservative safe spaces and running away from those platforms, or they just never join them in the first place.
>I’m skeptical that he can fundamentally change the incentives that make social media amplify extremist views over moderate views. “The other side is terrible” will always get more engagement than “we should work together”, even with validated identities.
There have been a ton of Elon doubters over the last 10 years.
I hope he is successful. We must get people back to the same team.
He said if he’s successful, that both the far left and far right would be equally unhappy, has he made any kind of statement to suggest his goal is to “get people back on the same team”? I.E. his goal is to get people to trust the platform, not each other.
>He said if he’s successful, that both the far left and far right would be equally unhappy, has he made any kind of statement to suggest his goal is to “get people back on the same team”? I.E. his goal is to get people to trust the platform, not each other.
Basically what he just said is that he won't be allowing violence or calls to violence.
When you boil down or remove the perjorativeness of 'extremism'. You can have a borderline extreme opinion on abortion. Either on right the right side that no abortion should be allowed or on the left side of 'abortion should be allowed even after birth' Neither of these are extremist positions though.
Extremism comes down to not being willing to entertain the other side and the requirement of using violence to solve the political divide. Those are far extreme positions.
I think we can all agree that violence isn't the answer and if some violent extremist from either side has been censored. Nobody will actually care.
I'm actually curious to push on your idea that "we can all agree that violence isn't the answer". Because I think there are more and more people who think it is the answer. I would guess you're saying the vast majority rather than all (Sorry if this sounds pedantic but it's not meant to be).
Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet says that you were joking? I do not think there is not agreement on what a violent extremist is.
>I'm actually curious to push on your idea that "we can all agree that violence isn't the answer".
Survivors always universally agree violence isn't the answer. I'm not saying literally 100% of people are opposed to violence. Will Smith just ruined his reputation and ended his career with violence.
> Because I think there are more and more people who think it is the answer. I would guess you're saying the vast majority rather than all (Sorry if this sounds pedantic but it's not meant to be).
The federal government has many responsibilities but 2 of the fundamental ones.
1. Military and police to prevent all violence. Government gets full monopoly over violence.
2. Borders to define where violence isn't allowed.
Fundamentally the government who represents everyone is the 'all'. Obviously it's more complicated than that because violence is allowed in some examples. Boxing -> MMA for example, but my understanding is that it's well regulated.
Even more complicated yet, there will always be a portion of every society who wants to kill. It's an evolutionary thing that Joe Rogan likes to call Chimp Brain. For whatever reason they are wired to the point they need to kill. Imagine the helicopter scene from full metal jacket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06nIz4scvI
Those people exist. Even in Ukraine right now. There are Russian soldiers who are doing this. Everyone is the enemy and needs to be killed. Stupid ukraine for whatever they did to force me to be there. I'm going to punish ukrainians equally, they all need dying.
These people are going to push toward violence. You have to proactive to avoid this.
>Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet says that you were joking? I do not think there is not agreement on what a violent extremist is.
Great question, and what is the 'correct' solution? I dont care about the next tweet but perhaps you are banned until you delete the tweet? Commonly that's what twitter already does.
Unfortunately there is a disagreement over calls for violence. It's difficult to find examples of calls for violence from the right wing. Obviously that is well censored. Yet there's lots of examples from the left-wing that go unpunished. The entire 'punch a nazi' thing from the left is insidious and bad.
The context is that this is an off-the-cuff comment during the early part of the Maga kid Nick sandman story. The truth hadn't come out yet. That is to say that nick sandman was completely innocent and now rich after multiple settlements by media who smeared him. Obviously a ton more verified checkmarks called for violence toward the maga kid. Lets not even mention the number of non-checkmarks who never had their call to violence ever censored.
That maga hat represented much more than the situation really did.
> The fix to the USA falling apart is free and open discussions between the camps. This is what Elon is planning to do with twitter.
Nice, now you just have to convince the MAGA Republican and the BLM Democrat to have an open discussion, when each of them prefers to listen to their own social bubble. Good luck with that...
Or you need people to realize that MAGAs and BLMs are a small minority of the general population. You need the media to behave like adults and stop pitting one side against the other for clicks/views. You need companies to stop caving to outraged people on Twitter.
>Nice, now you just have to convince the MAGA Republican and the BLM Democrat to have an open discussion, when each of them prefers to listen to their own social bubble. Good luck with that...
A russian cosmonaut spit on Elon when he suggested he was going to build a rocket that can be recovered and refueled. Called him insane and it can't be done. Well... don't know if you're keeping a score card...
How many short sellers of tesla lost an awful lot of money? Elon is quite the force to reckon with.
While I am not MAGA, republican, BLM, nor democrat. I have had conversations with all of those. They are all reasonable people who will listen to what you have to say.
I think there's certainly some conversations that are possible even now but so many off limits topics that are what need to be discussed. That's an easy first fix.
> Elon tweeted this yesterday ... He has a vested incentive/interest to help make this not happen.
Then why is he Tweeting nonsense cartoons that only serve to divide people?
I mean, the right has stood still for the past 13 years? This perception is part of the problem. Notwithstanding actual studies (tweeted in reply to that comment) show the exact opposite has happened -- that the left has moved leftward slightly while the right has lurched further to the right 4x further, we know the right has moved far right since 2008 because of January 6 2021. That's proof positive that a problem exists with right-wing extremists, and to just pretend otherwise strikes me as dishonest on Musk's part.
The far right went from tea party curiosity in 2008 to full blown anti-democratic, paramilitary, conspiracy lunacy in 2022. We had an unbroken track record of 44 peaceful transfers of power until 2021, when the former president and his party plotted to overthrow the newly elected government by force. We are now learning as texts are being leaked, they spent the entirety of Nov-Dec 2020 texting each other illegal strategies to prevent Biden from assuming office on 1/20/21, and then tried very hard to implement those strategies, including going so far as having constructed bogus legal theories and a faux-constitutional process to attempt to legitimize their efforts. And of course, purposefully fomenting an insurrection and gleefully watching as it unfolded.
And you can't even say it's the fringe because that wing of the party has literally taken over the GOP. If you don't believe me, ask any of the conservatives who have left the GOP citing how far right it's moved. People will cite AOC as the most radical leftist they can think of, and even her Green New Deal is fundamentally grounded in the ideals of capitalism. Not very radical leftist if you ask me. Where are the actual radical leftists in Congress, espousing an end to American democracy, the monetary system, and capitalism? You can't find them because they're not there.
So given all that, for the new owner of Twitter to tweet that conservatives have moved absolutely nowhere in the past 13 years, shows just how completely out of touch he is with the political climate.
(for anyone looking to reply that the left has move left, I will not contest that, but the point of the cartoon is that the left has exclusively moved left while everyone else has stayed the same. This is objectively not true.)
> People will cite AOC as the most radical leftist they can think of, and even her Green New Deal is fundamentally grounded in the ideals of capitalism. Not very radical leftist if you ask me.
That's what I think is strange. Same thing happens in my country, some people say that our country is turning into a far-leftist woke-nation. Even though center-right parties are in majority and most elected on the left aren't even really far-left, just Social Democrats or Greens.
> The GND is not about being green, it's about redistributing wealth
No idea what the GND does and what they proclaim, the Greens I mentioned are the ones in my country, which isn't the US. As far as I understand nothing else than Reps and Dems matter anyways.
> AOC is a radical
I don't think so, but that could also be due to me not being from the US.
Lots of things my country does would be wrongfully labeled as socialist, communist or radical in the US.
So its no susprise to me that AOC gets labeled as radical in the US, even though she still seems pretty tame to me.
I do welcome that she's more left than what I usually hear from Democrats.
EDIT: In order for you to understand me a bit better - If I'd be able to vote in the US, I would've voted for Bernie Sanders.
No joke, I agree on the vast majority of things he says. I say vast majority because I assume there are things he thinks that I don't know and see different. Else, everything I hear from him is basically what I think, give or take some small adjustments.
You could call me a Socialist, and I would be fine with it. However, I would never support an authoritarian or non-democratic system. In my opinion my country has the best political system which currently exists, so I feel fortunate for that. Still, I don't find it to be perfect. Too much lobby-ism, aka. corruption. Too much influence by industries. At least everyone has a vote and everyone can technically start a process to bring change.
Healthcare, critical infrastructure, essentials and maybe more should belong to the people of a country. The US seems to be a country belonging to those who own the most of it. Businessmen, politicians and so on. Markets have to be regulated and controlled. Tax avoidance is no different to me than tax evasion. Yada yada, feel free to ask more questions about my opinions, but I guess this is a good start.
Redistributing wealth and laundering taxpayer money is standard politics, not radical at all. The point is making is that she’s not a radical leftist. Insofar as you consider the GND to be redistributive it’s not doing so in a way that actual radical leftists would support. So how is she a radical leftist then?
The point is not mostly about economic axis, but the cultural one.
In the economic axis, you could argue that at least a certain part of the Republicans has moved to the left. The emergence of the New Right [1][2] speaks to that. Or Trump's shtick of being against "unfair" free-trade deals. Or that Republicans are now the party of the working class.
(as the twitter picture is getting a bit of thought)
The depiction of the right remaining where it is from 2008 to 2021 is misguided at best. The party of George Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney is the same as the GOP today is incorrect.
I believe that this depiction only makes sense for Elon if a different right endpoint is used - where the right is closer to Ron Paul and the left is instead the caricature at the extreme that the comic portrays.
It wouldn't surprise me if the Democratic Party has shifted to the more authoritarian end of the Y axis of the political compass - increased regulation in the wake of corruption and the increased power of corporations.
However, that completely ignores the shift of the the majority of the rest of the Republican Party to the top right corner.
This chart only makes sense for Elon if the right end is held constant at the libertarian and the left end changes, but ignores the rise of the authoritarian right along with any of his changes.
>The depiction of the right remaining where it is from 2008 to 2021 is misguided at best.
As I mention here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31206510 it has been objectively measured. There have been quite a number of leftist political commentators who recently have been offended that they are labelled right-wing now. Bill Maher or Russel Brand for examples.
Carlos Maza before his disgrace wrote on the subject @vox and he basically argued that obama and truman were the same politically. That's rather insane, sure they did start a bunch of wars and bomb countless civilians. I on the otherhand don't recall Obama threatening to draft the people in a union on strike into the war. I also suspect truman and obama's stances on immigration are slightly different LOL.
Dont get me wrong. I can certainly see both parties moving left. LGBT rights are a key example. There's nothing wrong with moving left.
>The party of George Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney is the same as the GOP today is incorrect.
I would agree.
George W Bush for example actively voted against gay marriage. Even planned to make a constitutional amendment to protect marriage from homosexuals. He banned homosexuals from boy scout. I can just imagine how horrified Bush is about it being Scouts now. Even was of the opinion that it's not possible to commit a hate crime toward a gay.
Do you feel this new republican party is going the right direction of LGBT rights? I think so. I applaud Trump here.
>I believe that this depiction only makes sense for Elon if a different right endpoint is used - where the right is closer to Ron Paul and the left is instead the caricature at the extreme that the comic portrays.
I think that's kind of the point. Objectively the far right hasn't changed much at all. In fact the common argument is that the far right has moved slightly left since that time. Which on 1 issue I clearly show the shift. Not the other way around like you suggest.
>It wouldn't surprise me if the Democratic Party has shifted to the more authoritarian end of the Y axis of the political compass - increased regulation in the wake of corruption and the increased power of corporations.
Bill Maher I believe made this point. That the left has gone so far left that everything to the right of them look right wing. You can identify this by seeing democrats like you say here.
Political compass was questionable for some time, but it's interesting to see it here. They are offensively wrong for canadian politics.
If you see your entire political spectrum as right-wing authoritarian. That's a problem with the graph. If you're going to produce a poor graph like this you have to justify it. They dont.
The failure largely speaking is that the left vs right false dichotomy. But political compass is also self-biasing from a far left position.
Hawkins in left libertarian should be bottom left corner. The graph is biased by that much.
In a way the political polarization is visible in those graphs. It's also interesting to see why. They do the analysis by finding answers to questions. "What is your stance on abortion, gun rights, etc."...
> There have been quite a number of leftist political commentators who recently have been offended that they are labelled right-wing now. Bill Maher
Was never a leftist, or a political commentator with any coherent ideology at all. AFAICT, he was only ever painted by some as a leftist because of the Right painting everyone who wasn't in lockstep with the racist war fury of the early 00s as “leftist”, and because being a comedian when the Republican Party was at a local maximum of control, for a while all the easy targets for his contrarian humor were in the Right.
And he’s evolved on the positions that got him perceived as leaning left then, becoming more positive retrospectively on the Iraq War, more Islamophobic over time, etc., more openly supportive of foreign dictatorships in general.
Brand I’ve not paid much attention to, but he never struck me as particularly leftist, either.
>Was never a leftist, or a political commentator with any coherent ideology at all.
He labels himself a leftist. His views are commonly left of center. He lives in leftyville california. He went to Cornell which doesn't produce republicans. I watched him on politically incorrect, but I only see the odd show here and there since he went to real time on hbo. I would say he's a lefty. I very much doubt there's any air of caricature in his public persona. I do believe he has been legitimate in his beliefs. Better yet makes tons of funny jokes.
If on the subject of political polarization of the left-wing has you saying Bill Maher is right wing. I rest my case.
>Brand I’ve not paid much attention to, but he never struck me as particularly leftist, either.
Like I know Bill Maher is left of center. Brand is left of him.
Lets not forget the bernie bros who are suddenly right wing as well, joe rogan, jimmy dore, kenosha shooter guy.
The point to take away. If you think "the right" are racist war fury and islamaphobic. You should leave your country. There's somewhere else that is better for you. "the right" are your fellow countrymen, they are on your team. Do you know of lots of your country people that you like are moving somewhere? Europe, Japan/Korea? Australia? Germany? Perhaps you should reach out to them. See if it's really better?
From broad brain traits like sexual orientation down to smaller ones like spatial perception or emotional intelligence, a young brain has certain development windows in which a trait or ability can get more or less developed. You could even add in personality traits like competitevness or deference once you associate it with a gender role.
With "female brain structure" i mean traits that are commonly overrepresented in what you might see as a regular woman. I know its inaccurate but so is the opposite, by saying there are only 2 genders and men are all men. Gender is a spectrum in many dimensions and my example of male physique and female brain structure is just a simple counter example against this.
The latest research doesn't really show that though, more that there is so much overlap between what were previously considered typically male and female differences in structure, such that this whole "female brain in a male body" hypothesis doesn't have the evidence to support it.
It was actually John Money who formed the basis of modern so-called Gender Theory by his twisted experiments on twin boys who he abused so thoroughly that they ended up taking their own lives. Check out the book "As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised as a Girl" by John Colapinto
Perhaps, but consider the words of those great gender theorists, The Kinks, in their hit song, "Lola" - boys will be girls and girls will be boys; it's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.
It's so exhausting hearing constant anti-trans rhetoric from all sorts of places that any support at all is nice to see. I am so tired of being a scapegoat and it's becoming terrifying because it doesn't seem to be slowing down. If anything, it seems like the world is becoming less tolerant. I frequently wonder where I can move -- if anywhere -- where my existence will not be questioned regularly.
(You may say: avoid social media, but... it's really everywhere. I don't use social media except for Hacker News.)
Yeah, the thing which bothers me the most is that people don't even try to educate themselves.
What do you think my reaction was, when I first heard of trans-people as a young teenager? Of course I laughed a bit and wondered why people think that genders are fictional and why a man would ever be able to be a woman.
But with time I got more curious, educated myself, thought about it, and I think I understand it pretty well now.
Others just seem to hop on a bigoted bandwagon and don't even try to understand.
I think the most important part is educating others, discussing this topic. But this also requires the uninformed person the be open to change their mind. I've had 2 discussions I can remember, one with my SO and the other with my best friend. Both in a way used the same arguments as a bigot would use, just in a curious and innocent way, if you know what I mean. After talking to them they seemed to get what it's about.
I have yet to talk to a trans-person in real life about this topic, but so far I think I understand it well enough in a way that I can talk about it to others.
---
> I frequently wonder where I can move -- if anywhere -- where my existence will not be questioned regularly
As sad as it is to admit, I think that's not possible. That's not even a specific issue for you I guess, lots of people get questioned about their race, sexuality, class, even if they're generally somewhere with more acceptance. Focus on people who accept you, don't get pulled down too much by haters and be proud of yourself.
> If anything, it seems like the world is becoming less tolerant
I think a large part is that trans seems to be the new topic. Race and homosexuality has been talked about, of course still not everyone is on board or agrees, but everyone knows these topics and has probably made up their opinion. With transexuality I feel that lots of people just don't know what it really is, which doesn't mean that they wouldn't accept it if they knew it. That doesn't help you at all of course, and I hope that you will once feel like you've been accepted for who you are by our societies. But I think there's still a long way to go. Stick to good people, try to educate neutral people, ignore bad people as long as you can.
All of this is coming from a white cis-male, so all I can do is try to be empathic. I wish you all the strength you need, don't give up!
> most 'trans women' keep their penises intact, and continue to enjoy using them as a man would. These are men with a sexual fetish, not women.
Disagree, fully. Thinking that genitals define your social gender is exactly the wrong thing to do. If a Trans-Woman wants to keep her genitals as they are, then she should, and this doesn't have an effect on her gender.
If she wants to undergo surgery - fine.
Saying that Trans-Women who "keep their penises" are just men with a sexual fetish is in my opinion a very wrong and mean opinion to have.
> Yeah, the thing which bothers me the most is that people don't even try to educate themselves.
Nuance is really important. I mean, I even agree with some of the concerns from social conservatives about transitioning and self-identification and "social contagions" and such. We should try to understand as well as we can, and not push anything on people they may not have felt themselves. It's important to not tell someone they're trans, pushing an identity onto them. There are discussions to be had.
... At the same time, though, that's not the whole story, as some social conservatives would have one believe, and those are not a reason to dismiss trans people. I remember having "gender dysphoria" feelings from a young age. It wasn't about dresses, or barbies, or whatever. I was uncomfortable taking my shirt off to go swimming, assuming my chest was more like my mother's or sister's than my father's or brother's. My genitals just seemed foreign to me. It got worse through puberty as these "male" features became more real.
If you'd thrown me on a deserted island with no culture, I would've still had gender dysphoria.
How do we make life comfortable for people who share in my experience? How do we make puberty less traumatic and do as much as we can to help them feel "normal"? These are questions that social conservatives dismiss as not real problems, but they were real problems for me.
---
> What do you think my reaction was, when I first heard of trans-people as a young teenager?
When I was a teenager, there was no talk of trans people, anywhere. It was an unheard of topic. I still had the feelings I did.
When I first heard of them when I was a little older (~20), it was amazing to finally know I wasn't alone in the feelings I shared. I booked an appointment with a licensed mental health therapist the next month to talk about it. On the rise of awareness of trans people, I thought, "Good! They won't have to go through quite what I went through." Today, I worry they're worse off than it being unknown like it was for me.
What ended up making me feel notably better was estrogen. It was strange how well it worked, although I still had distress over my physical features until I was fully transitioned. Now that I am... my gender dysphoria is cured. I still enjoy the same hobbies, listen to the same music, read the same books, play the same video games, and even dress in a similar style. I just don't have distress over my physical features anymore. Like getting treated for any other medical issue, the treatment made the issues I experienced go away. Now the only time I feel distress is when I hear people calling for the death of trans people or blaming societal ills on us.
I don't know why I'm writing all of this, so I'm going to stop here.
---
> so all I can do is try to be empathic.
I really appreciate it. All of us do. It means a lot.
> I wish you all the strength you need, don't give up!
No. I copied the person I was replying to's formatting because I thought it improved readability, and if there is any similarity in phrasing, it is coincidental.
> concerns from social conservatives about transitioning and self-identification and "social contagions" and such. We should try to understand as well as we can, and not push anything on people they may not have felt themselves.
100%. We have to approach this topic not only by accepting it, but also by sincerely discussing certain aspects of it. No teen should undergo surgery because of peer-pressure. On the other hand, teens who are certain that they're trans should receive the help they deserve. Difficult to navigate, but doable.
> If you'd thrown me on a deserted island with no culture, I would've still had gender dysphoria
That's something I have always wondered, and I know that the question is hypothetical, so its up to you to answer - Let's say we live in a world where gender roles and norms don't exist. People visit the doctor they need to see, but socially, people just are who they are. Would gender dysphoria still be a thing?
> Today, I worry they're worse off than it being unknown like it was for me
I know what you mean, that in a way they have a bigger spotlight on them. On the other hand, we have way more knowledge about this topic and newer generations are more open about it, so I don't think its that bad.
> I don't know why I'm writing all of this, so I'm going to stop here.
Was really interesting for me to read about your experience, but I see that a site like HN is probably not the best site for such deeply personal things. Would be really interesting to hear more about your experience. Maybe another time.
> no one is trying to change sex or biological genders
Except when they let men compete in women's sports. So if I have to choose between the new lefty version of gender, or what we had before, I'm going to choose the old way because it didn't result in comically ridiculous outcomes like that.
Granted, sports is a topic which we haven't really figured out yet. I'm also thinking about it a lot, how we could shape sports competitions, or if we leave the categorizations as they are etc. I don't have a definitive solution or answer to that.
But - What you describe doesn't really happen that often and its made a bigger issue than it really is. Yes, it happens. Yes, some do seem to maliciously abuse it. Yes, we should talk about it and really chew it through. As long as you really mean the first word you used, 'Except', then I am fine about your comment. If you use sports as an argument or excuse not to accept trans sexuality or changes to gender roles, norms etc., then I fully disagree.
Granted, sports is a topic which we haven't really figured out yet.
We figured it out long ago, and there were no problems before the gender studies majors got involved. Biological males and biological females should compete separately whenever there are significant physical differences between the sexes that affect outcomes. "Gender identity" is utterly irrelevant in this context.
I don't even know what it means to 'accept' someones sexuality or not. It doesn't affect me so I don't consider it my business. What I am saying is that if a model produces a ridiculous outcome, like men competing in women's sports, it's probably not a good model.
This is such a tired canard. Biological sex is an imprecise and discriminatory proxy for physical performance, and we can do better. Professional boxing already includes an additional objective measure—weight class—to improve match fairness. So not only is it possible to find a better discriminator, there is already one proven approach that can be used as a starting point today.
Furthermore, using biological sex as the discriminator in sport doesn’t just create unnecessary conflict for intersex and trans players, it also excludes cis-gendered people who are talented, love sport, but just didn’t win the genetic lottery. Dividing leagues by metrics other than gender gives everybody more opportunity to participate. Again, going back to boxing, if the only metric were gender, most or all of the people outside heavyweight class wouldn’t be participating at all.
Finally, I would also argue that team sport is more interesting when greater varieties of people with different strengths and weaknesses can play together. If we designed video games the way we run most sport leagues, matches would be split up into tanks vs tanks, dps vs dps, support vs support. Congratulations, you’ve made things “more even” by separating everyone using superficial physical traits, and lost most of the interesting dynamics of pitting different strengths against different weaknesses.
That's all very well in theory, but what classes would you use to replace sex in practice?
For example, in a recent women's swimming competition, Lia Thomas, who is male, was permitted to compete on the basis of his gender identity claims.
Do you consider gender identity to be a reasonable method of categorization? Because that is the specific problematic issue here, not whether different attributes than sex could be used in general.
"For example, in a recent women's swimming competition, Lia Thomas, who is MALE, was permitted to compete on the basis of HIS gender identity claims"
At least address her with the correct pronouns, that's the least you could do in such a discussion.
I hope my comment is not interpreted as arrogant, my point is that even if we are discussing biological sex that is no reason to strip people from their preferred (social!) gender.
I understand the point you are making, but I feel that using a female pronoun while discussing Thomas being male would have been the more jarring linguistic choice, given the subject.
I know what you mean. But pronouns which relate to social gender can be differentiated from sex/biological gender.
To rewrite your original comment, "Lia Thomas, who was born male, was permitted to compete on the basis of her gender identity claims" would be a fine and understandable statement, I think.
When talking about the person Lia Thomas, we are talking about a woman. She's Lia Thomas. Yes, she was assigned male at birth and her biological gender is male, but the person is female.
Again, I am maybe a bit petty, but I think this is exactly one of these important aspects when talking about transsexuality.
I'm not really disagreeing with what you're essentially saying, just trying to make a point about transsexuality.
Thomas has said himself, that he does not care about pronouns, as long as he gets to destroy women sports, so I don't understand why you're so offended on his behalf.
Having said that, of course he's not a woman. No doctor in the world would disagree with me on that. You're deluded by some kind of ideology which puts even Idiocracy to shame. Snap out of it.
> Thomas has said himself, that he does not care about pronouns, as long as he gets to destroy women sports
Source?
> don't understand why you're so offended
I'm not offended, why else would I mention multiple times that I'm being petty, but trying to make a point and start a conversation about transsexuality.
> Having said that, of course he's not a woman. No doctor in the world would disagree with me on that
Yet another person who doesn't understand the difference between sex and gender and instead decides to belittle me. Nothing I haven't experienced yet, still disappointing.
I see your point, but I think one has to take the context of the conversation into account too.
In a social situation involving a transgender person, it's considered polite to use pronouns that won't exacerbate any gender dysphoria they may feel. I would think that most of us have done this at some point, as a kindness.
However if we're discussing a controversial public figure, and the topic is sex versus gender identity, I feel it makes more sense to use pronouns that match up with material reality, for the sake of clarity.
Gender identity is more like an improper set of body-drivers in the brain. To use a comparison from computers, if you put AMD hardware in your computer, but install an nVidia driver, the video card likely will not work as intended since your computer is missing some of the information needed to use all its features.
Similarly, the brains of trans people tend to have the wrong "drivers" for their body, which causes dysphoria.
Since we don't have fine-grained control over brains, we cannot "reinstall" the right driver, and it's a lot easier to fix the hardware. E.g. just as putting in the proper nVidia card to match the driver will fix the problem in a computer; adding estrogen/testosterone and maybe some surgeries allows the brain-drivers to communicate with the body correctly.
Differences in "transition completeness" make perfect sense in this way. If most of your drivers map to "female" equipment, but the "penis driver" is working properly, you have dysphoria about everything but that.
(Evidence from brain studies agree that there are variations in brain structure in trans people.)
That analogy just comes across as trans propaganda. The brain is not separate from the body, it is part of the body. There's not any hardware/software divide like we have in computing, that could have this 'body drivers' concept make any biological sense.
> For millennia every human has known what a woman and a man is, now even supreme court justices in American don't know.
Oh, they do know - but it’s currently politically impossible for anyone other than the most fearless of iconoclast to say, as to declare oneself critical of innate gender identity being both real and far more socially significant than biological sex is possibly the worst heresy anyone can commit on social media at the moment.
I think some things are falling apart but not everything. If you had the foresight/luck/guidance to get into a stable white collar career, find a partner, and buy a house before 2022 I think you're on "the train". This train is currently pulling away from a burning station containing everyone else who hasn't done those things yet. It's still possible to escape the station by running down the tracks but at this point the train is picking up speed so your odds aren't too good. Obviously this is a young single person's perspective but I think we're by far feeling the shifts in society and the economy the most right now.
Alternative, darker analogy: everyone is on the Titanic. It's currently breaking in half and about to sink, but people like the author of this blog post are on the upper half looking down.
You wait for the market to cycle again - crash, boom, then crash, etc. Parent poster might have been in their 20s/30s though and implying that waiting for the next cycle would waste prime years of their life.
I'm not sure that life is wasted, but I'd suggest financial opportunity is wasted.
You just can't reach the level of financial security that the previous generation could if that previous generation had a drastically lower cost of living relative to income for the first X years of their adult life. Especially as X approaches the length of your entire career.
Anyone can move to my town and get an $18/hour starting wage job and buy a $150,000 house. Hard to imagine that this is unique. Look outside the cities...
That’ll happen at far too late of an age for it to matter though. Parents aren’t dying at 60 when they had kids at 30. They’re dying at 80 and the kids will be 50+ when they finally get anything. By then - it’s far too late.
As someone born in and has all my family in BC, Canada; I barely lucked out securing a house in 2020. This was thanks to a white collar career and financially literate partner.
There is no next stop. Look at Canada's housing crisis if you want to see where the United States is headed.
I appreciate extending the analogy but I don't understand what this actually looks like in real life. You only go to college one, have your first job out of college once, etc. If you don't maximize ROI on those (not just financially but socially) you're playing catchup forever. Success is absolutely still possible but it will take hard work and luck compared to if I had just followed the prescribed path like so many people I know.
I'm currently running to catch up. Feels like there's a non-trivial chance of failure, but I have enough privilege that I think I'll get on all right in the end. I could have been on the train from day 1 if I had made some different choices but there's no helping that now.
That's definitely possible, I'm only going from people I know personally. Lots of insurance and finance and consulting types whose lives seem obscenely easy with their regular raises and functioning health insurance (grass is of course always greener). And as for tech, while the industry isn't going anywhere I think any single tech job is not necessarily super stable either. I guess by white collar jobs I was specifically thinking of jobs at Fortune 500 companies.
This is a good way of putting it. Having graduated high school in 2008, it's felt my entire adult life like I've been reaching for brass rings just within reach (for me), barely clinging on, but still doing better than so many people who weren't even in position to do that.
We'll see about 'stable', there's some work I need to do if I want this to be sustainable/not something I'm at risk at crashing down from, but I've made it on the train while feeling the flames lapping at my neck.
I think the 'train' is also on fire just more insulated from the burning and it'll be a bit more comfortable until your car is engulfed and disconnected. IMO the beginning of Walkaway or maybe After the Revolution is a reasonable picture of what the future will look like economically with the gap between the rich and the rest of the world continuing to widen and life outside of that becoming increasingly tenuous. I'm not bullish on major changes happening that manage to address the causes of that. How well things stay glued together like in Walkaway or we get an explosive fracturing like After the Revolution is anyone's guess.
Yeah I liked it. They also made a TV show but I never watched that. Thought about how to include references to it but it didn't quite fit so I dropped it.
Crap. One of three for me. I'd have had a house by now if it weren't for the fact I had to pay back $120k in student loans. Heavy drain on my finances for years. Finally paid the damn things off earlier this year. In some ways I did the stupid thing by moving to an area where the property costs were beyond me, but it's where the people I know live. I was so very alone where I was before.
While I agree that buying property has become very difficult, what has changed in 2022 that prevents you from getting a stable white collar job or finding a partner? If you have the requisite skillset (which can be acquired more easily than ever thanks to the internet) getting a stable white collar job is very possible. And in the age of dating apps, so much friction has been removed when it comes to finding a partner (although it might not feel like it at times).
Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and, apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting vacuum.
As far as skillset goes, I would argue that it is only part of the story. Knowing the right person, is the key. You want to talk to people. You want to showcase what you can do. Stable job is doable then, but I don't know if it is easy.
And that does not even touch the simple fact that not everyone is built for that.
>> Some friction was removed; some friction was added. The 'ease' of finding a partner on apps creates an illusion of 'plenty fish in the sea', but 10s still go after 10s and, apparently, so do 6,7,8, and 9s creating a very interesting vacuum.
Is this not what happens in the real world too? The bit I'm stuck on is how it's gotten harder in 2022. At worst, it's the same as the past as far as I can see.
While I know you inteded this as a direct question, I'm actually going to give a meta-response. It seems to me that you think that the problem I'm outlining in my "train" analogy is that I personally am not on the train. To the contrary, the problem is that there is a train at all. Even if/when I manage to climb safely aboard, I'll have left behind an entire class of people who weren't so lucky. Smart, capable people who just wanted to do something respectable and beneficial for the world, like teaching or journalism or home health aide. I understand that all those people could just give up on what they're doing and "learn 2 code" but I think it should be obvious that (a) not everyone wants to code (or can do it to a high level), and (2) a society made up entirely of coders is not desirable.
More broadly though, I suspect you and I just have totally different worldviews. You correctly point out that there are straightforward steps to escape the crushing hopelessness of life in the modern underclass. What I'm saying is that it should be made possible and in fact easy for people to carry on a dignified, non-hopeless existence without being coerced into chasing the absolute highest-paying job available. I suspect this comes down to personality. If you're satisfied living "defensively," putting aside what you most crave or are actually best at in favor of the thing that will keep you protected while the rest of society atrophies, well that's lucky for you. But not everyone is wired that way. If we were, I doubt things like good food or art or music would exist.
As for the dating thing, if you're not on the dating market right now you might not be aware that COVID massively messed things up. People now (myself included) are weirder than pre-2020. Human connection is harder. In fact, I'm going on IRL dates from apps most weekends now, but it's still a struggle compared to how things used to be, for me at least.
I doubt anyone is still reading by this point but I will say this: my original post was not about how my life is falling apart. I suspect I'll be fine; I'm doing more or less exactly what I want to do, all day, every day. The issue is, net net, lots of people are struggling. If people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps was a viable solution, we'd live in a utopia by now.
Regarding career choice, I completely agree. People doing important useful work (e.g. teaching) should be paid enough to have a comfortable life. They should be able to buy a home, go on vacation, have a family, and not struggle financially. I guess I was looking at it from a more “realistic” point of view. I think, sadly, this is what people need to do. There are career paths I wish I could take but unfortunately they don’t pay well enough, even though they should, and I have to code useless crap instead. So I think it’s possible to have a comfortable white collar career (relatively easily if you are intelligent, hard working, and willing to move to a major city) but unfortunately it may not be fulfilling or noble.
Regarding dating, I got off the market just before covid. But - I didn’t date for the majority of my 20’s due to pretty bad anxiety. After finally starting dating (using apps) I’d found a long term partner within 6 months. I feel like, if I could do it almost anyone can. Maybe things have got really weird but it’s worth maybe reconsidering your expectations etc.
>> The issue is, net net, lots of people are struggling.
I completely agree. Things need to change. However in the meantime, I think it’s still possible to “play the game” and succeed. The problem is it may be incredibly unfulfilling.
Except there's a mob outside with pitchforks, and the conductor and engineer are part of it[1], and everybody in it has the same look on their face, "You really thought you could get away?" as the air brakes hiss into their fail-state, and everyone on board the train realizes the red herring of the burning station didn't work out.
The constant theme since the dawn of civilization threaded through all of history is that everything is falling apart. Change is continual. History is more like the seasons. Nations rise. Nations fall. Sometimes there's revolt. Sometimes there's peace. There's a continual game of King of the Mountain being played at all levels.
So what can we say? Situation Normal - all effed up!
Enjoy this phenomenon called life. You only get one.
For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer.
Unless you lived in the parts of the world that didn’t have that peace or that prosperity… it’s important to remember peace and prosperity are regional phenomena that are not shared around the globe equally.
Certainly there have been some parts of the world that didn’t have that peace or that prosperity, but it was widespread.
Former colonies threw off their colonial yokes. Most of the "developing world" developed. Marginalized groups gained new civil rights. China and India rose to become great powers even as their former colonial masters, though declining, still enjoyed peace and prosperity.
Recognizing that there is still a lot of injustice and inequality in the world doesn't require denying all the progress that has been made.
> Recognizing that there is still a lot of injustice and inequality in the world doesn't require denying all the progress that has been made
And recognizing that we've made process shouldn't make us believe that we've done enough. Recognize what we've (or they've) achieved, be proud about it but never loose focus on making "it" even better.
(I'm just adding to your comment, not disagreeing)
> Certainly there have been some parts of the world that didn’t have that peace or that prosperity, but it was widespread.
> Former colonies threw off their colonial yokes.
While I don’t disagree that decolonization was progress, it ironically came at the cost of the peace that had been imposed on the colonies by their former colonial masters. Many of the world’s most conflict-stricken areas today are ex-colonies still in the process of stabilization.
The dirty secret of peace is that it is often imposed by a dominant power. Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, Pax Americana. These were peaceful times because of intense power asymmetry.
> While I don’t disagree that decolonization was progress, it ironically came at the cost of the peace that had been imposed on the colonies by their former colonial masters.
What is this "peace" you speak of? I think you want to take a closer look at the oppression that was endemic to colonization and occupation of foreign lands. One of the worse examples is Belgium's colonization of the Congo:
If an African laborer didn't produce rubber (for example), it was common to chop off a hand (his own or a family member's) to encourage him to work harder.
Congo may be on the worse end of the spectrum of colonization, but it is hardly a singular example.
> dirty secret of peace is that it is often imposed by a dominant power. Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, Pax Americana.
If it’s literally in the name it’s not a secret. Competition for monopolies on violence are bloody. When we can sidestep that contest, we get a lasting peace.
Strange because I've always seen the saurdukhar/fremen as a literary interpretation of a real aspect of human nature - the ability (of some) to perserverve and excel in stressful/difficult situations.
Some real life examples I've pointed too are the ghurkas in WW2 or Russian hackers.
The "Defining a generation" section is fairly short and describes the theory, and the "Timing of generations and turnings" section maps the theory onto the past ~500 years.
(Edit: got the indentation wrong, I thought the comment I was replying to was on the quote, not the "it's BS" reply. I don't think this is BS, at least not completely.)
The quote is similar to "what does not kills you makes you stronger", easily disproven by polio. [For the nitpickers: I know, the statement depends on the context]
But let's move on: what do you mean with "strong men"?
If you mean some sociopath/callous/ruthless emperor or dictator capable of starting massive wars - it hardly constitute creating good times.
If you mean men that are successful in current society... then very very few billionaires came from a childhood of hardship and poverty.
If you mean men that are capable of taking good decisions while facing difficulties and the stakes are high... then you are describing good education and good mental health, which are does in now way comes from "hard times".
All modern pedagogy and psychology sciences indicate that hardships create a lot of broken people and a few hardened narcissists.
If you mean that affluent and decadent societies become self absorbed and weaken as a whole - then I would tend to agree... but the term "strong men" would be profoundly misleading.
> All modern pedagogy and psychology sciences indicate that hardships create a lot of broken people and a few hardened narcissists.
Really depends on who you ask in the field of psychology. There have been several perspectives contrary to what suggest (e.g., humanistic psychology, positive psychology, post traumatic growth, etc) and I don’t agree that “all modern pedagogy and psychology sciences” suggests that hardships yield nothing but broken people and narcissists.
However, I generally agree with the idea that sayings like “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” are a bit silly (they ignore the fact that what doesn’t kill you can severely weaken you for life).
I just don’t think it’s particularly helpful to take things to the other extreme either.
Good point. Wait, no I disagree and I think history probably does as well. If you'd like to engage in some unmitigated pedantry regarding this topic, check out https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-... which refers to this exact cycle.
The post specifically calls out the saying as “the modern version of this idea has deep roots in Romanticism (c. 1800-1850), a reaction against the reason of the Enlightenment – which makes it more than a touch ironic that this brain-dead meme is so frequently presented as clear logic.”
It's pretty much the definition of fascism - a delusional paternalistic idiot infecting everyone around him with his own neuroses and narcissism, in the name of "patriotism" and "respect."
Good god, enough with this "fascist and nazi seem to have lost all meaning" nonsense. Let's call it the "No true fascist fallacy". I could bring the corpse of Himmler here and some people would regurgitate the same "Bu-bu-but that's not actually fascist enough!". OP was basically quoting the definition of Ur-fascism by Umberto Eco. Is that historically accurate enough for you? Or should we check beforehand if whoever he was referring to has ever took part in the Salo republic, before we commit the grave sin of not being taxonomically accurate?
Well yes, the Goodwin point is now crossed very casually, just like people are using superlatives for the mundane things, such as "I ate the most amazing fries yesterday".
This makes for poor debates, where there is little nuance, fuzzy scales and hardly meaningful communication.
The reason people focus on definitions like “oh, it’s really about toxic masculinity!” is because admitting the truth would make them look bad:
Fascism is a collectivist authoritarian system with regulated commerce rather than direct state control, often co-occurring with systemic racism.
The reason people don’t want to be honest about the definition is that it’s the platform of modern Democrats, who are gaslighting by calling everyone else a “fascist”:
Democrats are collectivist authoritarian.
Democrats are pushing for regulated commerce.
Democrats are rebuilding systemic racism, from rationing healthcare [2] and government aid [1] based on race to attempting to repeal civil rights laws in WA [4] and CA [3].
Democrats took to the street in acts of arson, violence, and murder to terrorize the public ahead of an election — the modern Brownshirts. [5]
I’m paraphrasing what the fascists said their goals were.
If you read about fascism, their proponents viewed it as “Marxism 2.0” — where they could leverage the socialist ideas of collectivist authoritarianism without the problems encountered by the original Marxist revolutionaries with total state control of commerce.
A unified populace where “everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
I couldn't care less what oblique definition of fascism came out from some american think-tank in the 80s, narrow enough to not anger any of their thatcherian or reaganite friends.
I'm italian, my grandfather was drafted in the balilla first at 14 and the fascist army later. And his stories of the time were all about the violence, the machismo, the open contempt for the gay, the jewish, any other minorities. That's fascism, no matter if it doesn't match your clinical idea of what fascism should or shouldn't be.
And yes, they were as silly and ridiculous as the tiki torches guys or the Jan 6 coup guys. Until they were fully in power. Then everybody stopped laughing, or wondering if they were really dangerous or not.
And to be quite honest with you, worry not - I think we'll find very, very soon how close those are compared to US democrats to actual fascists(tm).
As I said in another post, I'm italian, and my grandparents had some direct experience on the matter. Their families were destroyed by nazists and fascists. My grandmother family was jewish, A have a few pictures of her relatives with a number tattoed on their arms. I never dared to ask where or how they got them.
No idea how fucked up my gramps were, but by their direct account, yes that "strong males" attitude we're talking about was quite a fascist trait.
It's the nationalism, totalitarianism and dictatorial control that make fascism. The obsessions are a means to an end or just quirks by example and do not necessarily fascism make.
When the far left calls Trumpists fascist they are generally referring to the far right's current objective of overruling elections and installing a theocratic theocracy under Trump where white males are in charge across the board.
The definition of fascism is the merger of state and corporate power. Patriotism and respect, while they may be against your ideology, have nothing to do with it.
Though that may be, it is in fact not how the word is used, and likely once the concept was pressed to the fore and came into relevance beyond the pale of the esoteric, never more was used with that definition in mind.
No, "a strong man" makes fascism. This happens when the rest of the men are weak, so they seek a strong leader to make up for their own weakness. Strong men don't follow a fascist leader; strong men can't be led like that. It's weak men who are the fertile ground for fascism, not strong men.
I'm saying that right-wing authoritarians often use it as an attack on people they deem as not traditionally masculine, despite the original intention. It's used frequently enough that some people might mistake association.
Search for this saying on twitter, for example. It's been co-opted as fascist propaganda.
Perhaps the language has evolved to the point that the work needs some translation. Because it strikes me as vague enough to be harmful with folks like Putin aspiring to embody "strong men".
The point is I was trying to be neutral. Because depending on who you ask Putin is the definition of true "strong men" or he's a tyrant desecrating the phrase.
If you find yourself in good times, then the key is to make them harder for yourself. Self sabotage by being an outspoken iconoclast, and be hated by everyone! Whee!
Makes sense. Strength is useless during peace times, so strong men find themselves out of a job with nothing to channel their strength into. "Weakness" which in this case means classically feminine traits are useless during war times but are far preferred during peace times.
We don't need strong men during good times and we don't need weak men during bad times.
Although now we are in neither a good nor bad time. What kind of men do we need?
Virtue is not what survives hard times, it's grit and brutality. Raw strength. Morals and virtues are what arise during good times once we've secured survival.
I'd argue that virtue is a strong survival trait, and vice is a sign of weakness. But we may be considering different things, different aspects of life.
This is utter nonsense. Strong men make bad times, as anyone who's lived under a strongman can tell you, and strongman regimes are extremely weak in terms of human development, technological progress, and military power, as evidenced by the utter failures of North Korea and Nazi Germany and the USSR. Whining about how they did some notable things is missing the point: They couldn't sustain, they had no staying power, they achieved some victories and then either got pounded into nothing or stagnated while the rest of the world moved on.
You can see in modern Russia what decades of strongman rule, first in the USSR and then under Putin, looks like: Idiot conscripts hyped up on moronic propaganda getting blasted by an actual military fielded by a so-called "decadent" Western nation, with their ships being sunk by land-based weapons (and if you don't get why that's pathetic, you're not worth talking to) and their economy being destroyed by those "decadent" nations deciding to not buy from them anymore.
Strongmen create good times? Briefly, maybe, but get out before the piper demands to be paid, if anyone will have you.
I mean, even in your own post, you spell strong man different from strongman. Here’s a definition of the word strong for you: “possessing skills and qualities that create a likelihood of success.” Obviously this meaning is divorced from the definition of strongman you provide, so why be obtuse about it?
I've always thought that saying is pretty weak, not only because of the bias that anyone believes it will tend to characterise themselves as one of the "strong men", but also because what one side characterises as good times, another side will characterise as bad. The end of WW2 was a good time for the allies, pretty devastating for Germany, and yet we don't see Germany in current times as on a completely different trajectory than the rest of us, its actually probably the most average of the former allied countries.
Also the political perspective, what the left would characterise as good times the right would probably characterise as bad, and visa versa. At that point its no longer strong and weak men, but men of one camp and men of another.
There are places that have been great to live for multiple generations, and places that have been troubled for just as long, I don't think this model has much predictive power.
For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer.
You mean Ukraine? I would hardly say that the current situation threatens the post-ww2 peace. Compare now to ww2 and the differences are huge. ww2 claimed vastly more lives, in addition to Stalin and Hitler.
Do you think there can't be any civilizations in the universe which exist indefinitely? For the past millions or even billions of years? If humans get past the next couple of centuries and start spreading out into the solar system and possibly beyond, what would cause us to have a last generation?
This gets straight into realms of like eschatology and the sources of and constraints on life, areas in which I hold deeply unpopular beliefs compared to the norm here.
The most neutral way I can phrase this is that I think life is a planetary expression, more or less fundamentally inseparable from the planet on which it emerges. We may eventually be able to break those bonds but I don't think we're anywhere near as close to that as we think we are, nor do I think we should even try.
I don't necessarily agree with giraffe_lady, but I can see the argument where leaving the planet fundamentally changes what we currently consider "human" society to a point where it no longer can be a considered a continuation of the general earthly society. Evolution maybe, but less star trek and more belters from the expanse but taken to an absolutely extreme extent. Maybe closer to something like Seven Eves.
I can't see that there's a moral way for people exit the solar system boundary out "into the stars." No one making that choice can arrive there, or even experience an appreciable part of the trip in one life. It's committing generations to be born, live and die for no purpose except to exist and to breed for some future goal of some past people. I believe this to be wicked.
People have always migrated into the unknown in the hope of something better for the people who will call them ancestors. But they've also always been able to make certain promises: that the sun will shine on them as it does on us, that crops will grow even if they aren't the crops we know, that the air is safe to breathe, that god will hear them there. Some of those people have been wrong about some of those things, but they always had good reason to trust in them.
We don't have reason to believe any of that about anywhere other than here. It's possible to imagine a future so grim that the best chance for our offspring is for us to force them to risk these unknowns. It's our responsibility to prevent that choice being necessary.
We can imagine things that could change this calculation. FTL, centuries-long human cryogenics, cross-lightyear microbiology. These are fantasies. If these powers are ever in anyone's grasp, that people will be fundamentally different from what we are, even if they came from us. I don't know what will be right for them and I have no claims on what they do.
Focusing on those far off fantasies of another people is a failure to appreciate our place here, the cosmic gift we've been given with our solar system. It is an understandable weakness but we should fight it. We have enough future in front of us as ourselves, we should leave the unrecognizable far depths of it to the unrecognizable people who will inhabit it.
Highly recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Aurora, an exploration of precisely these concepts written in the fascinating perspective of a generation ship's AI instructed to narrate its journey.
The idea of going multiplanetary is not to abandon Earth out of necessity, but out of precaution. When you make a backup of your hard disk, it's usually not because you intend to go use your other one for target practice. Waiting to leave Earth when problems become clearly insurmountable is akin to waiting to backup your HDD until you notice it's failing. Indeed the very first thing we should start doing once we begin colonizing our second planet is planning to colonize the third.
There are countless ways human civilization, if not the human species, can come to a rather abrupt end: supervolcano explosion blotting out the sky, directed gamma ray burst destroying the atmosphere ( hypothesized as one of the reasons for the great ordovician extinction ), comet impact acting similar to the supervolcano, random evolution creating a supervirus, and so on. And the countless ways we might manage to kill ourselves go without saying: nuclear war, nukes, deploying weaponized viruses, even far more innocuous things like fertility < 2.5 for too long.
Many of these causes can, have, and will happen abruptly.
Human lives aren't data to be stored against future need. These "backups" aren't redundant; they will have worth, and demands, and dreams, and rights of their own. Are we adequately accounting for that when we imagine this interstellar future? Are we able to meet our responsibility to them with the dignity they deserve? I strongly do not think we are.
It's chilling but correct that so much of the language around this concept talks of colonies, because that is what we're discussing. Other lives, kept far away, for some benefit to ourselves, but not to them.
Until we can present a plausible vision for "the good life" in space, away from the earth that birthed us, we should not be pursuing this goal. If we end then so be it. We have many other means to reduce that possibility, much more accessible, that we're refusing to use right now. Let's pick up that shovel and see how far we can get first.
The fact that no one has figured it out in over 13 billion years kinda suggests not, doesn't it? That's pretty much the Fermi Paradox, and perhaps the answer.
That's so far away that "indefinitely" applies. If I told you could live until there was no more usable energy left in space, would you worry about not being immortal?
There definitely can be human civilizations that last indefinitely, so long as we stop keeping all our eggs in one basket, planet-wise.
Once we get humans living far enough apart that information about pandemics travels faster than pandemics do, then we should be largely invincible, barring suicide from ennui.
The larger our sub-galactic civilization, the more resilient it becomes to things like total war, total political revolution, etc.
It's really hard to be a galactic emperor at multi light-year distances. By the time you wipe out half the population of the empire, the other half will have doubled.
It's also easily conceivable that in less than 100 decades from now, global unrest or war will make us regress 100 decades. Climate change in particular is going to cause a lot of problems with feeding people.
Maybe so, but that would be straying from the point.
GP said "there can't be any human civilizations that last indefinitely" and in response I gave an easily conceivable version of how human civilizations can last indefinitely.
But what you've posted is science fiction, in contrast there have been a number of historical civilization collapses. Something that's easily conceivable in the mind isn't necessarily practical or going to happen.
It's been over 50 years since humans last set foot on the moon. While there's hope that man will land on the moon again by 2025, success is not assured, and a catastrophic accident could set manned space missions back by decades.
Yes, we might collapse and never recover, but the universe is a really big place, so there might be civilizations which avoid that. And if they did, then maybe we can also.
The psychological tension that is inherent to capitalism (indefinite exponential growth is required, unbounded exponential growth is impossible) requires that the system be under plausible existential threat at all times.
Eh, there have been institutions with almost absurd longevity in history. The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years between Constantine and Vatican II. Ancient Egypt was already thousands of years old when Socrates harassed aristocrats in Athens.
It's very easy to forget that the revolutions of Britain, France, America, Russia; it happened just a few generations ago, and upended most of the political landscape (even in countries that didn't see actual revolutions). I think what is happening is most of our modern institutions are all of roughly the same age, and after initial idealism and momentum have roughly at the same time begun to ossify and show cracks as people have started taking them for granted.
This is the first time anyone has attempted democracy on this sort of scale. Looking back we've had republics with longevity, we've had autocratic dynasties with longevity. But democracy? Besides Athens, which had a very different shape of political system, this is really a first. It's a huge political experiment, the long-term viability of which is being determined here and now by our ability to keep our shit together.
The other thing to remember is that even those long-standing institutions had internal change that was a huge deal at the time but is now hardly remembered at all, or considered minor.
You can even see this right now, where countries do not consider themselves to be as old as the current government's age, but much older. For example, most Italians will not consider Italy to be "started" at the Republic in '46, or even the Unification in 1861, but that the country is much, much older.
Italy as a polity, regardless of how real the polity actually existed as a coherent and cohesive governing state, pretty much existed continuously from Rome until entirely left out by the Congress of Vienna in 1805 though. By the time 1848 rolled around most people alive were perfectly aware of the concept of Italy in living memory, and even those who didn't actually live in what was considered Italy - in particular those living in the south from Naples down to Calabria and Sicily, if they were educated and literate, were still aware of the notion of Italy as a distinct political entity. There might not have been much of a centralized government based in Italian territories that represented the polity for long periods of history, but ruling regimes/dynasties come and go but political entities tend to last longer.
Egypt, even though it was still intact by the times of Socrates, has had a number of changes and shake-ups, rises, falls, attempts to change the ancient state religion, etc.
Britain had the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the Magna Carta which amounts to a major revolution was enacted in 1215, and the Norman conquest happened in 1066. All these major events hardly occurred "a few generations ago".
I'm afraid that the idea of things largely unchanging in the past comes from our poor knowledge of history, compared to recent events.
The British revolution, which is the first revolution, is still fairly recent on a historical timescale (and the later revolutions would arguably reshape Britain more than the British one ever did). My point is exactly that 2-300 years is not a particularly long time.
> Egypt, even though it was still intact by the times of Socrates, has had a number of changes and shake-ups, rises, falls, attempts to change the ancient state religion, etc.
There were some dynastic changes and bumps along the road, absolutely, but my point is the overall shape of Egypt was remarkably stable even through the Persian conquest.
Ancient Egypt's "bumps along the road" were several periods of almost total anarchy and state disintegration that each lasted for many decades.
You're right that there's nothing comparable to the modern era: the modern era hasn't existed long enough to have collapses that total. I think you are not applying the same level of scrutiny to ancient societies as you are to modern ones.
> catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years
You have a very flexible definition of "unchanged" then. The Catholic Church pre-Charlemagne is going to be very different from Saeculum Obscurum-era, itself different from Investiture Crisis-era, itself different from the one familiar in the Late Medieval, different from Counter Reformation-era one. It's absurd to me that you think the first time it changes significantly is Vatican II!
> Ancient Egypt was already thousands of years old when Socrates harassed aristocrats in Athens.
My knowledge of Ancient Egyptian history is extremely poor, but what little I do know strongly suggests that considering it as a single stable form of government for thousands of years is even worse an error than claiming the Catholic Church was so stable and unchanging. Perhaps akin to saying that the Holy Roman Empire, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and modern Germany are all one single country that has lasted for 1200 years (because they're all called Germany).
It's not 100% undisputed but most historians would agree that until conquered by the Persians in 525 BC, Egyptian history consists of 26 dynastic changes and 8 major distinct periods. Each dynasty of course usually had more than one ruler. Since we're talking about Socrates, then the slightly extended timeline of 33 dynastic changes (including 2 Persian, and 2 Greek), across 9 major and distinct periods, would represent pretty much the mainstream view that is supported by the available evidence, ending in its incorporation into the Roman Republic in 30 BC.
If anything, Egypt is one hell of a counter example of institutional stability. I would also make the pedantic quibble that the HRE never called itself "Germany" until the term was incorporated into part of its much longer official title in the late 1400s. English usage started in the 1500s. It's not to say that the concept of "Germany" or "Deutschland" didn't exist, but pre-Westphalia it's difficult to make truly apt comparisons to conceptualizations of states today, and the term equivalent to Germany was used, intermittently at that, from Charlemagne's death for the next 700 years somewhat like the status of Scotland or Wales within the UK today, as in, it coexisted with the HRE as an part but not considered to have referred to the whole until the HRE lost its non-German territories an that was pretty much all that was left.
>The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years
That's a bit of a myth, thrown around a lot but not quite true. It has existed in some form, but by no means remained changeless. The doctrine is substantially similar but then we can say the same thing about Judaism. Here, we're really talking about the organization, which has many issues:
-The East-West schism in 1054 tore the Catholic Church in half.
-Then there was another schism about 500 years later when Martin Luther & subsequent Reformation really splintered things, sparking many violent conflicts over the centuries. I'm sure many Catholics felt like things were falling apart then.
In lesser events that still made people feel things were falling apart:
-Rome was taken & Pope Pius was imprisoned in the Vatican during the Italian Reunification in 1870 there was probably a similar feeling.
-After Vatican II from 1962-1965 I know from my own relatives that they felt (and still feel) that the catholic church began to fall apart.
-The last few decades with countless child abuse scandals.
I did stipulate until Vatican II, and my point is rather how little the preceding millenium of reformations and Avignon popes and so on actually changed the church. It undeniably had some impact, like the reformation created a need for educating priests to be able to actually argue their case. But the shape of the organization was largely the same through all of this.
> I did stipulate until Vatican II, and my point is rather how little the preceding millenium of reformations and Avignon popes and so on actually changed the church
Clearly, that was your point. It's just completely wrong given things like the Gregorian Reform.
You'd have a better argument that the Catholic Church has been largely unchanged in the nearly 1000 years since the Gregorian reform (or, even better, the 700+ years after the series of reforms starting there and running through the 13th century councils) than the 1600 years between Constantine and Vatican II. It’d still be making the qualifier “largely” do an unreasonable amount of work, though.
The reformation didn't just change the educational needs for priests, it split off a significant portion of it's population out of the church.
I don't think we can cite 1600 years of stability for the organization at all. We may do so, somewhat, for doctrine, which is an achievement, but it's also equalled or exceeded by a few other religions.
Vatican II was a trivial change compared to vast numbers of other changes in the Church - the Church of the 3rd-7th c. and its hierarchy were dramatically different than the Church once they'd broken from Constantinople and Eastern Rome had lost Ravenna and it's control over the Vatican. The Papacy and institutions that formed after the 700s/800s once Italy was independent of the Byzantines are where the pope transitions to a king lording over the Papal States which was a massive change. Those Papal States are gone now, another dramatic change that fundamentally redefined the Church. There were other revolutionary changes throughout the church's history like the Avignon Papacy which changed not only where the Church was centered but reformed the Papacy dramatically to put it under the thumb of the French kings. The schisms after that changed the Church brought the relatively late invention of the College of Cardinals and significant reforms and changes in hierarchy. The developments of various monastic orders and knightly orders also brought major changes and reforms. The Church after the Protestants sacked Rome and Pope Clement VII fled into hiding and was reduced to a figurehead controlled the Holy Roman Emperor was a massive break as well. The reforms of the Counter-Reformation were dramatic as well. The church has always claimed to be a stable perpetuation of tradition, while the reality has been a dynamic institution that's changed significantly not only in hierarchy and structure but doctrine. There always were popes, cardinals, and bishops, but their roles, powers, and relations changed constantly.
Perhaps with regards to "scale" this may be true, but in most ways I disagree. There were hundreds of democracies in the ancient world - particularly in Greece - and they all tended to break down along similar lines. The Greeks even had a term for this - stasis - which there's a body of literature about. In stasis, the norms of democratic government are slowly eroded through an escalating series of power plays (each justified by previous excesses). This in turn erodes the public trust in institutions required for society to function. Which usually ends in violence. So I think it's a mistake to assume our situation is unique.
> The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years between Constantine and Vatican II.
No, it really didn't.
> Looking back we've had republics with longevity, we've had autocratic dynasties with longevity. But democracy? Besides Athens, which had a very different shape of political system, this is really a first.
Modern democracies are almost entirely representative democracies, more like historical republics (and in fact, many of them are explicitly republics, though some are technically limited monarchies) than classical democracies.
> Nations rise. Nations fall. Sometimes there's revolt.
I think the concern at hand (at least in the US) is that we’re on the eve of that fall or revolt, and whatever is born out of that, for good or ill, probably means a couple of really hard decades.
I understand taking historical perspective, but I'm not a fan of complete equanimity about change. Lots of bad stuff is "happening all the time", like murder and cancer. It'd be nice to acknowledge when the things that are happening seem to be good or bad.
> The framing begins with appreciating how closely intertwined the divisive and unifying effects of information technology can be.
The author speaks as if "unifying", as opposed to dividing, is the redemptive quality of information technology. I don't see it as an unmitigated good and, somewhat ironically, the story of the tower of Babel is about how their single-purposedness (?) was the source of the problem altogether. Genesis 11:6: "And the Lord said, "Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do?"
The issue of climate change, among other issues, is being used to promote unity and one world government. But it doesn't follow that this approach is best to climate change or anything else. We need variation in policies and technologies in order to select the best approach (and not get locked in to a sub-optimal approach).
One world government is bad because it will attract evil elements who use it to place all peoples under their control/taxation/exploitation, with no recourse or escape. All in the name of helping people and fighting for <insert your favourite political cause>.
By analogy, it might seem more efficient if families were to live in communal dormitories instead of their separate houses. In reality it would create stultification and at worst mass suffering when individuals took control over all aspects of other families' lives.
Currently, on climate change this variation is some countries doing nothing, others doing worse than nothing (e.g. encouraging mass deforestation, as in Brazil), and some countries doing a little more than nothing, but saying they are doing enough when compared to those who are doing nothing or worse, and that they can't afford to do more because it would put them at a disadvantage to the others. So this is less about "selecting the best approach" and more a race to the bottom of how little one can do while still pretending to care (or alternatively keep denying that the problem even exists and do nothing).
Problem is that, as I said, the architects of globalism are using this issue. They aren't motivated by the climate or any other of several, rotating concerns. They're motivated by a lust for power/wealth/prestige. You can't achieve difficult objectives unless you are really trying--and they aren't!
However you can ruin the efforts of others by demanding that their work serve a primary political agenda.
Well... dead planets (that harbor no life) are lower entropy than living planets as their surfaces change much less over time. Fewer possible microstates = low entropy.
Hence, if you take a complex biochemical system and reduce it to <100 piles of atoms of specific elements, this is a lower entropy state. Mass extinctions, collapse of civilizations, that does lead to a 'more stable and ordered' state.
Nothing lasts forever, and we have been on the downturn of the civilization for the last hundred years or so. This is merely the time when we started running out of the reserves that our ancestors had secured us, and thus problems started becoming apparent.
The last hundred years? So electrifying rural areas, civil rights, vaccines, space exploration, Medicare (US), public medicine (first world countries), and more are all the downturn?
I think we're at a transition point. People talk about our entering a post-scarcity economy but what you don't hear so much about is exactly how would that happen? Human nature being what it is those at the top who are accustomed to consuming the most civilization has to offer are still playing by that same old playbook - but in a post-scarcity economy that consumption is obscene and it's becoming clearer to more and more people that the old playbook needs to be thrown out. But that "old playbook" has been around for 6,000 years (actually more)!
I remember the old Police song having the line "there is no political solution for our troubled evolution." They say we live in the Anthropocene epoch, an epoch dominated by man. The problem is that's not the world we evolved in and for humans evolution isn't just a matter of physical adaptation but social adaptation as well. Our social structures we've built over the millennia no longer work the same in this new world we've built. We have to evolve, but social evolution typically involves violence and upheaval and would appear that everything is falling apart.
Nothing lasts forever, but some things last a really long time. Like life on this planet (several billion years). Or possibly advanced alien civilizations out there. Question would be why can't humans find a way to last a really long time?
"Everything is falling apart" if you are someone who contributes information to the public sector in the form of analysis, scientific studies, news reporting, etc and your audience was built solely on your credentials, or the organization you belong to being respected. Those credentials and institutions are collapsing and they need to rebuild public trust by providing legitimate value instead of spending the next 10 years whining about how the commoners just don't get how valuable they are.
This is a bit of an oversimplification of the argument. Technology is argued to be a wedge, but this is in the context of well documented social division. In recent memory we were significantly less divided and the most consumed media sources served as moderators. Brushing this off as just another prognostication and everything is always messed up is missing the seriousness of this.
It is perhaps fortunate that the Ukraine situation is demonstrating once again that just about the only time America can function in a coordinated manner is when there is an agreed upon external threat. Perhaps the next external threat will be carbon climate cancer? Or will our internal divisions prevent us from effectively dealing with that. It is going to be a rough ride one way or the other. The current war will be our first experience with global famines since the so called green revolution.
Also that will prove costly to the existing economic order, companies will resist every change that threatens their bottom line unless and until they find a way to benefit themselves. Look at oil now "energy" companies like Shell that knew climate change was a looming cliff but were so heavily invested in oil they buried the issue in confusion and flak until they figured out how to make money off of green energy.
There's a lot more political polarization, no doubt, but I'm actually not sure it's true that there's more social division. A few decades ago, basic questions like "is it OK for different races to get married" and "should women participate fully in society" remained unresolved, with a ton of people wielding substantial power sitting on the "no" side. (The Handmaid's Tale wasn't meant to be some crazy impossible premise; Margaret Atwood genuinely believed that she was describing a real trend that might happen if we're not careful.)
There's still time for that backslide to happen we're already seeing conservative reactionary groups pushing for returns to before those questions were 'resolved' in more and less direct terms.
I wouldn't claim that a backslide is impossible, but it's important to understand that these weren't just conservative reactionary issues at the time. I have an uncle who got interracially married in the 1990s, and his wife's family were concerned about it because of gender rights - they thought that he as a Hispanic man was going to expect her to be "barefoot and pregnant".
I hate to make both of us feel ancient, but Bowling Alone was written in the "decades ago" period I'm talking about. While the trend of social atomization has definitely continued, I don't think division as such has gotten worse since then.
(Seconding the recommendation though, it is a good book.)
He has follow up books like the one I suggested. It hasn’t gotten better. Division is stronger at socioeconomic lines than ever afaict. We replaced race and sex division with class.
People are only measuring social division in the online discourse imo. Look at the world. People are lining up politely in the grocery store and smiling when you cross paths on the street. I'm guessing you will also note there is no social division in your neighborhood either when you go out walking around.
Meanwhile, in the 1960s people were burning their draft cards, starving themselves to be underweight for the draft, or fleeing to canada. Returning soldiers at the airport would be spat on by protesters. Black people regularly had stones thrown at them or worse and no one made any news article about it. Activist groups were actually armed, and serious situations occured with that. Teenage girls were congregating in a canyon outside of los angeles to join a serial killers sex cult. Groups of people were travelling the country in a school bus turning square people on to acid and mushrooms. That was the peak of social disorder.
We are all in line now, despite what the narratives in the media make us think. People hold opinions strongly, but they are of a limited set of prescribed opinions from the media. Find any thread online about a given topic you've read about online before, and the comments will all be the same and predictable. We aren't exposed to as much unorthodox thought as our population used to be back before global media had total influence on how we sourced our information about the world.
I remember watching the universal disdain Americans shared for high finance after 2008 and even movements like Occupy Wall Street resonated with a lot more people than one would have predicted. Then, all of the sudden, a whole new field of social engineering algorithms are unleashed on the populace, convincing everyone that their neighbor is the true enemy.
Why do you think that OWS was killed by new "social engineering algorithms"?
The US has had a strong anti-protest culture for decades. March in the street, for anything, and the response is near universal cynicism and derision of the "hippies". With OWS this was apparent with traditional news coverage that constantly focused on the most ridiculous looking protestors
And now we're even teaching children which "group" they belong in, from the time they're in kindergarten, to further divide the populace so that we can be at war with each other instead of them.
things became quite, i think the main reason was that they fixed the economy, for a while.
However you have a point, media is very potent factor; You see that in Russia, where the state has a monopoly on the press, and old TV managed to persuade a majority in necessity of this senseless war, which is going on right now.
The new media thing is creating a kind of monopoly on information for your own tribe, because it trains everyone to discard any info that comes from the other side of the fence. So there is a strong element of social control here. (don't know if Mr. Musk will manage to change that, but he seems to be trying...)
... actually you can escape the filter bubble: On twitter they have the 'list' feature, you can define your list of sources and switch between lists, however most users are probably not using this feature. You had a similar feature on google+, but that was a long time ago.
I feel generally that everything is falling apart. I also have an article still pulled up from earlier this week titled Why Pessimism Sounds Smart. It seems pessimists are sometimes wrong! But sometimes they are right too - especially in the last couple of years I have observed incompetence seemingly everywhere I go. But is this the changing world, or my changing perspective? It's really difficult to pin down. At the same time, I read books that were published before I was born that allude to many of the same problems that seem so prominent in our society today, reinforcing the idea that We Didn't Start the Fire.
Still, the decline in quality of goods and services seems to be backed up by data as well as anecdote. I go to schools, churches, businesses. I see lightbulbs out. Things that are broken that could be repaired if only someone would put in 10 minutes of effort. My opinion: Everything is maybe falling apart in America specifically. I hope I'm wrong, for my childrens' sake.
Unfortunately said someone has been made redundant, and the parts wouldn’t be available anyway because all of the planets microchip factories are building bitcoin rigs
I think the question shouldn't necessarily be who started the fire, but if it is a good idea to just let the fire burn, even though you weren't the one igniting it.
Yes, that is how I think about it. Billy Joel's generation didn't start the fire, but they also sure as hell didn't put it out. Don't get me wrong. Some people are carrying buckets of water towards the fire, but there are other people poking holes in the buckets, or shoving them so that they spill the water, or whatever other metaphor you would like to use here. And also some people standing around and telling the people carrying the water that it's not the correct way to put out fires.
Yes, exactly. And to add to your list, there are also people who are not carrying buckets, because "I didn't start the fire, others are making it worse, so what's the point in even trying to carry a bucket."
The worst thing is feeling defeated, even though you could actually be helping. Doesn't even matter if you're carrying a shot glass or a whole barrel full of water, at least you're doing the best you can.
The incompetence could also be a result of the fact that a lot of shit is happening at the same time.
I suspect that the world after WW1, where they also faced many similar situations at the same time (pandemic, financial crash, etc), also looked pretty incompetent to everyone.
The US is a culture of authoritarian narcissism, and while it feels good - to some people - it's simply not sustainable.
In the US it's more important to be rich than to be moral or right.
But you can't deny mutuality, interdependence, and rational modelling of collective consequences without getting into some very broken places and bad outcomes.
Maintenance worker can't just pull over on a lark with a screwdriver and fix a wobbly thing anymore. someone needs to submit a ticket. we've processified everything to the point where it stops making sense.
I hope I am not being too inflammatory by saying this but it's ... quite amusing how sheltered Americans are in thinking that a little political tension is a danger to their own country.
Bosnia was about to be destroyed and more recently, attempted to be divided by neighbors and they're still fine.
Look at anywhere that's not Americas or Western Europe.
Contrapoint: it is actually good for Americans to worry about whether democracy will be destroyed in their country. Complacency and ignoring issues with "there are other countries that got it worst" may sounds smart or "worldwide-inclusive", but does not help neither Bosnians nor Americans. Possibly the most politically apathetic nation is Russia .. and where it got them. Political apathy is what you get in autocracies and dictatorships - and what simultaneously empowers them.
It is debatable whether Bosnia is fine or will be fine. It is in danger of new rounds of violence. For that matter, even if Ukraine wins, which I hope, it wont be fine. Wars do actually damage places where it all happens and price is paid for many years after.
Well look at Israel, it had so many wars(some it almost lost). I would argue it made it stronger, more cohesive. I hope the same happens to Ukraine, despite the price it is paying.
They have own hard liners with genocidal rhetoric's and pretty violent practice. No, all the threats and violence did not made Israel better. It made them increasingly violent place.
America has a history of political tensions posing a danger to it. For a few years it maybe wasn't one country and quite a significant percentage of the population died sorting that out.
Americans seem to think that we're the only ones who ever had a Civil War and that it is a Really Big Deal, ignoring that there are civil conflicts occurring right now, and with higher body counts, too.
As an American, I tend to think we have a sort of permanent linguistic hyperinflation. Everything here is always bigger, huger. Sometimes it's true and sometimes it's not.
Part of the strength of the nation, however, is that everything is a big deal, all the time. This causes things to (eventually) get dealt with.
In the USA things appear to be big or are getting bigger but really they are not.
Residential structures are made from ever lower quality materials that are thinner than ever and with shorter lifespan (accelerated aging, necessitating sooner replacement).
Foods are being stuffed with ever larger quantities of fillers such as corn, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and air to make the package look big even though there is nearly nothing nutritious inside.
quite amusing how sheltered Americans are in thinking that a little political tension is a danger to their own country
As an American, allow me to be even more inflammatory. Americans think that everything is falling apart because we've collectively never had a real problem in our life.
The amazing thing is as an American, I can ignore TV, all sources of news, fights on Facebook, etc. I've done it for years. Nothing bad happens. In fact the only effect is that I am blissfully unaware of all the minutia that are leading people to believe everything is falling apart.
I have never known anyone who lived in Bosnia in the 1980s, but I can imagine that the arguments over Yugoslavia's makeup might have felt like 'a little political tension' back then.
It's true that the US has a lot going for it. No enemies to its north or south, still the largest economy, high levels of education, etc. At the same time, standards of living have seen a large drop over the last two years. This appears to be intensifying the arguments over social issues, and increasing incitement to violence. What I see when I look at places that are not the Americas or Western Europe is that the peace and wealth people take for granted can be lost so easily.
I get your point, but a lot of Bosnians died in that conflict. I have travelled there, and have talked with a lot of Bosnians. A lot of them are still pretty shook about the past. A lady I talked to had a sniper shoot each stair below her as she walked up a flight of stairs to mess with her. Stuff like that sticks with you.
Most people are still alive and life goes on but it is not a road you want to go down if you can avoid it.
What we are experiencing is acceleration. Left-wing accelerationists want to bring on capitalism's end-stage calamities in order to foster a revolution that will overthrow the bourgeoisie. Right-wing accelerationists think that worsening economic conditions will trigger some sort of white-nationalist boogaloo garbage. I'm not an accelerationist, for my part, but it's pretty clear to me that acceleration is happening. Capitalism has been in objective decline for decades, but now the decline is happening faster than most of us ever imagined.
There's an inevitable sequence to this sort of thing. Capitalism becomes corporate capitalism ("Stage 2") due to business consolidation. This requires the proliferation of middle management positions, both to curtail inefficiency and to prop up a middle class (preventing overthrow) while small businesses die, so what you get is an evolution into managerial capitalism. ("Stage 3") At this point, bureaucratic diversions make it hard to know what is happening, and few people--least of all the overpaid boneheads on top, who can't tell when they're being lied to--know if their managers (or consultants) are any good, so this leads to reputation capitalism ("Stage 4") in which there is no such thing as truth--there is only what people say, and power resides in the ability to control what others say. (In other words, might makes right.) This leads to widespread, deliberate misinformation that proliferates; the system begins to shake, but the nature of post-truth capitalism ("Stage 5") allows it to preserve its own stability, for a little while longer, if it can convince a large number of people that they're either already winning (bourgeois false consciousness) or destined to win (fascist fuckery). This isn't hard at all, in a world where nothing means anything, and in which the convincing telling of lies is the surest path to prestigious jobs and high incomes.
We now live in a world where having a national reputation is necessary just to get an average job--hence the pathological obsession of the young with fame and "influencers"-- and in which admission to the most prestigious universities is as competitive as it has ever been but the product is the worst it's ever been. We have the right wing using fascism to win; we have the left wing diverted into callout-culture identity politics and virtue signaling instead of actual change. The dysfunction of capitalism can no longer be contained. We have stagflation now and will see worldwide food riots in a year or two. Read up on the Russian 1990s if you want to know what the capitalistic world (which is now the entire world) is in for.
Is everything falling apart? It's hard to say. It'll get a lot worse in the short term, but humans and human civilization are resilient.
I think if the debate is "everything is pretty bad" vs "everything is kinda bad, but..." then it's not going to go anywhere.
I wish that Wright had focused more on Haidt's concrete suggestions in his article. For example, towards the end of his article, Haidt writes,
"Reforms should reduce the outsize influence of angry extremists and make legislators more responsive to the average voter in their district. One example of such a reform is to end closed party primaries, replacing them with a single, nonpartisan, open primary from which the top several candidates advance to a general election that also uses ranked-choice voting. A version of this voting system has already been implemented in Alaska, and it seems to have given Senator Lisa Murkowski more latitude to oppose former President Trump, whose favored candidate would be a threat to Murkowski in a closed Republican primary but is not in an open one."
And that's an idea that may have pros and cons! But it focuses the debate on specific proposals to improve the situation, rather than just a general referendum on "How Bad Are Things?"
Note: No, reddit isn't a good source, but It was the first one that i found. Searching for Camille Paglia and transgender you will find more information about it..
No, gender dysphoria has existed since like forever. But it's certainly not a good sign when our institutions try to indoctrinate us with gender ideology. [1]
The day it really becomes "the science" is the day I will lose hope in the rest of the apparatus. Lysenkoism [2] be damned.
[1]: And by that I mean believing that we should behave as if there are no differences between biological females and MTF, or that it's all just a "social construct", or that we have a moral duty to "deconstruct" all social constructs which interfere with some ideology.
What’s it like to have such strong feelings about gender?
I don’t have that, the idea that it’s all just a social construct is so embedded in the way I see the world, I just don’t see how anything about sexuality or biology are immutably connected to gender identity. To me the two are completely divorced from each other.
Interesting, doesn't that Lia Thomas photo [1] make you laugh (or make you angry if you care about college swimming)? [2]
> To me the two are completely divorced from each other.
Some of it certainly could be. But insisting that it's all just a social construct makes it hard to explain things which are prevalent and similar across different cultures. (e.g. females growing their hair, or them being generally "cleaner", or intonation differences, etc.)
Or even more broadly, the fact that males and females of different cultures can be attracted to each other, even though the exact gender expressions might be different.
I can observe that Gender is one of the strongest social constructs that we have. But I think most of the ideas around them; Men shouldn’t cry, women are better caretakers; are not inherent, they’re a function of inertia. You can probably find more examples of people who don’t fit the mold in one way or the other than people who do.
Also, women not being “woman enough” for sports has been an issue prior to the idea of transition. See Surya Bonaly and Caster Semenya
what is your biggest worry for society? Also...what does society mean to you, and would you consider in the context of your reply that there may be different perspectives and possibly multiple societies simultaneously so perhaps clarifying your scope of society and it's impacts.
Climate change, wealth gaps, and both combined. (Richer people can escape the effects of climate change more easily). I fear that wealth will become even more important, furthering the gap between classes even more.
> what does society mean to you
Depends on what context. Of course for my direct political environment, people living in the same country as I are the biggest society I can lump together. But I'm not very nationalistic so I try to think about what's best for people globally. I think the most important society to me is all humans on earth. Else, every nation or group just looks after themselves.
> would you consider in the context of your reply that there may be different perspectives
Yes, but - I fail to see what group of people transsexuality would be the biggest danger to. Even when it goes against your world-view or religion, there is no harm done at all when someone is transsexual. It just goes against ones opinions.
That's why I disagree heavily with the sentiment that "when men turn into women, that is a sign that the end is near". If transsexuality is more dangerous to a person than climate change, social injustice or other big topics, it really just does feel like fear-mongering and blaming arbitrary boogeymen for what's going wrong at the moment.
I appreciate the sentiment that 'it's always been like this.'
That said, I am of the view that the mindset of optimizing for efficiency and the tools we've acquired over the last 50-100 years for doing so may, in addition to the benefits, have unintended consequences on a large scale. A couple of examples; in yesterday's discussion of nurses want to leave the profession, it was observed that the buyers of EMRs are optimizing for different things than the nurses that use them, to the detriment of nurses and patients. And, Boeing's products may be less safe now that it is optimized for capital rather than engineering.
To vastly oversimplify, it seems to me that optimizing for efficiency will eventually remove all margin for error, and so errors will be more frequent. The larger the span of influence of the optimization, the more these errors will accumulate in all kinds of places and all kinds of ways. So, my running joke is that the spreadsheet may be the death of Western civilization, and it remains less funny to me as time goes on.
> To vastly oversimplify, it seems to me that optimizing for efficiency will eventually remove all margin for error, and so errors will be more frequent. The larger the span of influence of the optimization, the more these errors will accumulate in all kinds of places and all kinds of ways. So, my running joke is that the spreadsheet may be the death of Western civilization, and it remains less funny to me as time goes on.
That may be a problem that can be addressed though. Neglecting resilience to over-optimize for efficiency seems like it's symptom of stability. People, as a whole, seem to lack the wisdom to not fool themselves that they can ignore long term risks while the short term is good, especially when we're talking about spans greater than generation.
However, a lot of that stability is getting disrupted right now: the pandemic, a big land war in Europe, supply chains are fucked, etc. The war especially has blown up a lot of naive assumptions that had been taken for granted until a couple months ago. I think here's a decent chance that for the next few decades, Western civilization will value resilience far more than it has over the last few.
The elephant in the room is that the Industrial world wanted alot of people, and the post Industrial world does not. Not only in terms of production, but in terms of having a livable environment for everyone.
So what happens to what are now "excess" people? The answer to that question is gonna define pretty much everything.
We can’t sustain our current levels of spending without a growing population. The lions share of American spending goes to social services: social security, Medicare, Medicaid.
If you’re referencing to automation taking over…I fully agree with your point. It seems like half the people around me have made up jobs.
The elites that control everything dont really care about social security, medicare, medicaid.
Automation can make all the things they would want. Why do they need you around again? Especially when having you around creates pollution that makes things worse for them....
Whats scary to me is that before the elites needed other non elites to be bodyguards/administrators/army/muscle for them to help avoid that, and they at least had to trickle down to their henchmen to keep in power. What happens when they have automation for that?
This is dangerous bs. Easy to swallow for the uneducated masses.
Putting all moral consideration aside, imagine you could totally depopulate two continents of your choosing. Why should any problem of modern economics be solved by that?
The concept of depopulation is simple enough to fit in a single sentence, it leaves out the real problem and its vast complexity (our linear economies and lifestyles attached to it), conveniently some one else is to blame and with all that, it is compatible to xenophobia. It ticks all boxes.
Of course, no problem would be fixed, the only thing you would buy with depopulation is time. The real problem is our unsustainable system, which is independent from any population count.
>We are too many people for what?
Is the question you fail to ask and answer. And going further this path of stupidly easy enemy stereotypes leads to all the societal atrocities you may have heard of.
> The real problem is our unsustainable system, which is independent from any population count
I mean it's just science that the planet can only sustain X people at Y life style (you can swap out "life style" for "level of consumption"). Like there is hard rules of physics about quantity of water, minerals, et cetra. So you can either lower X, lower Y, or try to side step the problem entirely by going to other planets/mine asteroids/magic to increase the resource pool.
A glass can hold X amount of water. You add X plus 1 and water spills out. "Guess the glass couldn't sustain X water!" is what you are claiming?
Systems can only be sustained within certain parameters. There is no magical system that is always sustainable regardless of parameters. But it sounds like we are saying basically the same thing in any case.
Consumption can go down and more population can be supported. Or consumption can continue at current levels but population will have to go down. (and that level it would have to go down might be truly horrific)
I find all the comparisons to previous technological changes lacking for one very simple reason. Previous technological changes never had granular data on individuals the way today's technological revolution does.
Since most such pieces are written by journalists, or written by people who think about these things but are also writers, they tend to focus on the idea distribution medium aspect of today's technology. So that would be the internet, or social media platforms, or chat platforms, etc. That's the most easily comparable part to past information technologies such as the printing press.
But the novel danger with what we're facing today is not the fact that everyone is on social media, or that stuff can go viral. Even though these are turbocharged versions of past technologies, they are still versions of past technologies (being turbocharged can still make it meaningfully different, but for now I'll ignore that). The novel danger is personalized data collection. It's the fact that major companies can built extremely accurate and granular profiles of every single person on their platforms.
This is completely unprecedented. Throw in even rudimentary AI, and I can target my message to match every individual's unique psychological profile. This was never possible in the past. The most you could do is target something based on a few broad aspect of someone's personality. Where they lived, what religion they followed, what language they spoke, etc. But there were thousands if not millions of people who filled that mold, and there were vast variations within those people, which still allowed for non conformity.
Today, however, you can target every individual and even the same individual differently depending on whether it's the morning, or evening, or if they are working or relaxing.
It's this that's truly novel and truly dangerous. You don't even need Social media to be involved for this to be a problem. The Chinese government, for example, famously has a highly intrusive citizenry score for its citizens based on a variety of such micro targeted factors. And pretty much every government across the world is also doing the same. Corporations have gone even further because they have all the data.
My impression is that optimism peaked in the '50s -- some time before I was alive -- and has been in decline ever since. That's not to say that there haven't been major achievements since then -- I wouldn't have a career without them -- but increasingly, we have seen experts throwing up their hands and saying "I don't know how this will ever be solved". The most optimism right now comes from people who think major societal problems will be solved by machines that can solve more problems than people. That of course does not contradict the idea that humans are having more and more trouble solving our problems, even as we continue to move forward in the near term.
We have never had a unified cultural perspective on this phenomenon -- it is either an artifact of regressive politics, a warning sign of the limits to growth, a reflection of deep failings in the basic structure of society, a punishment from Heaven for our disregard for tradition, or [choose as many as you like]. But as it continues to become more visible, the possible conclusions clash more and more. So while social media appears to create divisions in society, I don't think it's the only cause, and I don't think the only causes are things for which we can so easily allocate blame.
There is a specific danger that will form the context for evaluating the destructive power of social media: The invasion of Ukraine will have costs. Innocent people will die. Obviously in Ukraine, but people who ate the grain produced in Ukraine and Russia may die of starvation because Ukraine's ability to plant an harvest large areas has been destroyed. Prices for the available grain in the world will go up.
Starvation and price rises will provide new opportunities to fearmonger and divide. Social media is ill equipped to stop Russia and others from using it to manipulate fearful people.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 342 ms ] threadSure Sri Lanka has the same problems. Sure the middle east just went through the same problems and some states are still enduring civil war. Though from what I can tell it's mostly the USA in this 'falling apart' situation. Canada is certainly not far behind.
>“The story of Babel,” Haidt writes, “is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
Damn that's a good analogy!
Elon tweeted this yesterday: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144
The political polarization starting pre-existed social media. This started late 90s or for sure early 2000s with GWBush. Bush knew something from his father's reign. He could play identity as a victim. So he would pretend to be a yokel and when the elites would make fun... it told every yokel that Bush was the only option. Obviously he never passed laws or tried to 'fix' something for yokels. It was shallow identity politics but identity politics breeds more identity politics.
The democrats then needed identity politics of obama. It's an inevitable scenario, 'first black president' will eventually happen in history and inevitably it would be toxic with identity politics. The rest is history, Trump is a symptom. Biden is a symptom.
>By “here” I mean a time when a big change in information technology has implications for social structure too dramatic to play out without turbulence. In Nonzero I discussed a number of such thresholds, including the invention of writing and the invention of the printing press.
Blaming social media is not legitimate in my opinion; social media will be what fixes this. The fix to the USA falling apart is free and open discussions between the camps. This is what Elon is planning to do with twitter.
He's a billionaire and will be the world's first trillionaire, ONLY if the USA doesn't fall apart. He has a vested incentive/interest to help make this not happen.
>One grievance that drove support for Donald Trump in 2016 was that American coastal elites felt more connected to elites in other countries than to their fellow Americans in the heartland.
Which is for sure true. The reality is that they are still the same team. You can enjoy F1 over Nascar. You have to still realize you're on the same team. When the left-wing attacks the right-wing. You can't take actions that harms your own team. Eventually that team breaks and here we are.
I feel like cancel culture may be your blind spot.
>When the left-wing attacks the right-wing
This is part of the problem. When you casually define the left as "coastal elites who are out of touch" and the right as "Americans in the heartland who are uncared for", you are taking a real problem and reframing it as "all left-wingers vs all right-wingers". You are making people feel attacked who are not in the group you are trying to criticize. People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US lately).
In defense of nozero or haidt, statistically that is accurate. The red vs blue is certainly concentrated rural vs urban.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/upshot/america-political-...
It's interesting the consequences of this as well. There are policies being changed without a mindset of urban vs rural. Where a policy that makes sense in a urban point of view is catastrophic to rural communities. "If you think the world is overpopulated, leave the city."
Political policies like carbon tax for example disproportionately harm rural people. Some dude living in downtown toronto taking the subway is basically getting a pay cheque from the government at the expense of rural folks who must drive a low mpg pickup truck. What you think farming can be done in a econobox? https://metro.co.uk/2015/03/28/udder-disgrace-cops-find-cow-...
In fact, if you know a bloc of people support your policies and another doesn't. Figuring out of a system which transfers wealth to your supporters at the expense of your political opponents is an ideal system.
The problem though is that we in a country are the same team. Attacking 1 side is never beneficial. Urban folks attacking farmers with carbon taxes? Ok well how's that food inflation working out? Attacking oil workers with carbon taxes? How about the gas prices?
>People (on both sides) do this to each other constantly (though they have been since prehistory - it's just particularly bad in the US lately).
It's interesting as well to imagine how to solve this in the USA. Lets say Elon fails or even makes this worse and he deletes twitter. It just doesnt exist anymore.
How do you bring both sides back together without blood being shed?
You cant do nothing, it's actively becoming worse right now. Act now or else.
It's certainly not going to be solved by more censorship and removing free speech. In fact, censorship is a new thing. Free speech has been around for plenty long to know it's not causing it. My hypothetical also assumes reduction in censorship by elon failed.
So as president happytoexplain of the independent party. How do you bridge the divide? How do you bring people back together?
You might try to go nationalism. Tell everyone they are Team America, that the fight isnt with each other. Build some foreign enemy for people to rail against. At the same time go around ending all the wars the USA involved in. End wars that the USA arent even involved in. Reduce tension, reduce war exhaustion. Make sure people's economic situation is as good as possible because of high correlation between violence and economic situation. Reduce the poor mindset in general, tackle it directly.
Who did I just describe?
The only things Elon is planning to do with twitter is to silence his critics, become a Rupert Murdoch style figure, and keep manipulating stock prices.
Elons "graph" only shows the left moving away, like they were running away from the globalists lovin satanist-migrants. Or maybe just climate scientists?
This entire "blaming wokeism" is just identity tribalism form the other side. How come you fail to realize ...
Or how easy can you fit in that image "moderate" leftists like bernie sanders or noam chomsky?
What is the difference between woke and left?
Whats odd thou is, (1) there is no clear definition of wokeism, like its an arbitrary stereotype used by demagogues and (2), that woke is often displayed on the other side of right/conservative. This makes it a strong indicator of propaganda. A surface, people can project their negative emotions to, which is another red flag in terms of populism. Even you used it indirectly, to refer to your peers "not liking woke", which is why i asked.
I am not defending wokeism too. One core value of the left is equality and solidarity. When you define wokeism as some LGBTQ-stuff, it would be just a subset of these values. So being woke does not make you left.
This is my answer to, what is the difference between woke and left.
But I don't think we can overlook the pressures that push people towards it. The problem is that a lot of movements that get grouped under "woke" self-identify with vacuously positive labels that can't be negated. If I go around telling people "anti-racism is bad", they're going to think I mean "racism is good", and they're not going to believe me when I clarify that I'm referring to specific policy ideas promoted in books such as Ibram X. Kendi's famous How to Be an Antiracist. Unless you're talking to people who are so politically engaged you can name-drop specific authors to start with, I'm not sure what term other than "woke" you could use.
From my perspective, conservatives/rights often stand out with blatant and harmful falsehoods. Even in your last post is a central self contradiction.
>movements that get grouped under "woke" self-identify with vacuously positive labels that can't be negated
>If I go around telling people "anti-racism is bad", they're going to think I mean "racism is good"
Looks like your "anti-racism is bad" statement is not meant to be negated. I think, what you meant is "racism is bad but what you are doing is too", which, from my perspective, is not equivalent to "anti-racism is bad". Your mistake here is, that you use their "racism"-label and invert it, to make it suit you. By doing so, you reduce the conversation to labels and discard similarities between you (which is actually the most harmful part).
A slight difference in phrasing is deciding if i agree or disagree with you. Is it my fault or yours?
There's a risk of labels getting in the way, no doubt. But there's a lot of things that seem straightforwardly impossible to reason about without labels. How could we discuss what the abstract principles of race relations in the US should be without identifying and naming the major strains of thought on that topic?
Even if you could magically eliminate racism in every human brain on earth with a snap of your fingers, the socio-econimic factors, inherited from the beginning would continue to be disadvantageous for blacks. So the racism back then, even when not present in minds today, would persist. This is called systemic racism, because we discriminate indirectly, not by skin color but by education, vocabulary, human capital in general. And on top, racism will of course prevail in minds.
From that, you can easily advocate for some sort of compensation, some kind of counter discrimination, anti-racism.
I find that term troublesome too, because you actually asking for support for all poor people, not just blacks, but i would never call it a ideological label and bad, because i can see the reason behind it. Using it as a label and associating it with (group) identity is unfortunate but not my mistake.
Then, like so many other progressive and left-activist terms, it got co-opted again and inverted by the right into a general pejorative, indicating nothing other than mockery and caricature of the left. But it definitely came from somewhere and it at least used to mean something.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
The woke "left" is different; it's largely a phenomenon of the petit bourgeoisie, and is not opposed to capitalism, or oppression more generally; the woke instead want representative members of generally marginalized groups to be proportionally represented in the existing power structures, without any significant change to those power structures. The reason the woke come off as so strident and belligerent is that membership in the professional-managerial class (PMC) is increasingly precarious, and US educational/cultural institutions overproduce people with the qualifications for entry into/maintenance of that class position, relative to the dwindling size of that class.
'left' to me has always been associated with class politics and 'woke' with identity politics.
Which has been objectively measured.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-po...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-polarization-of-politic...
>This entire "blaming wokeism" is just identity tribalism form the other side. How come you fail to realize ...
I never blamed wokeism.
I’m skeptical that he can fundamentally change the incentives that make social media amplify extremist views over moderate views. “The other side is terrible” will always get more engagement than “we should work together”, even with validated identities.
I'm skeptical that someone who unironically uses the phrase "woke mindvirus" has any such intent. There's a reason right-wing accounts are flooding the platform now and everyone else is running for the hills, and it isn't because Elon makes both sides equally welcome or unwelcome. He's clearly picked a side.
Sorry, I forgot where I was posting for a second. It was an idiom, not an attempt at a mathematical proof.
The point is that only one side suddenly feels unwelcome and the other suddenly feels very welcome.
>Is it true that the "wokeness" debate is such a big issue you can't use a social media platform run by someone who doesn't agree with your stance,
No. I just don't look forward to the flood of edgelord Nazi shitposters, bots and harassment I predict Elon (and, Trump's probable reinstatement) will draw to the platform, nor do I particularly want to use a platform whose owner considers my views to be akin to a plague. I will, as long as it remains feasible to block accounts I have no interest in.
>or have the incentives of social media tricked you into seeing it as a totalizing conflict where nobody can agree to disagree?
I didn't take over Twitter because I felt it needed to be liberated from the "woke mindvirus." Elon is bringing the totalizing conflict, I just want to read my feed in peace.
There have been a ton of Elon doubters over the last 10 years.
I hope he is successful. We must get people back to the same team.
Basically what he just said is that he won't be allowing violence or calls to violence.
When you boil down or remove the perjorativeness of 'extremism'. You can have a borderline extreme opinion on abortion. Either on right the right side that no abortion should be allowed or on the left side of 'abortion should be allowed even after birth' Neither of these are extremist positions though.
Extremism comes down to not being willing to entertain the other side and the requirement of using violence to solve the political divide. Those are far extreme positions.
I think we can all agree that violence isn't the answer and if some violent extremist from either side has been censored. Nobody will actually care.
Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet says that you were joking? I do not think there is not agreement on what a violent extremist is.
Survivors always universally agree violence isn't the answer. I'm not saying literally 100% of people are opposed to violence. Will Smith just ruined his reputation and ended his career with violence.
> Because I think there are more and more people who think it is the answer. I would guess you're saying the vast majority rather than all (Sorry if this sounds pedantic but it's not meant to be).
The federal government has many responsibilities but 2 of the fundamental ones.
1. Military and police to prevent all violence. Government gets full monopoly over violence.
2. Borders to define where violence isn't allowed.
Fundamentally the government who represents everyone is the 'all'. Obviously it's more complicated than that because violence is allowed in some examples. Boxing -> MMA for example, but my understanding is that it's well regulated.
Even more complicated yet, there will always be a portion of every society who wants to kill. It's an evolutionary thing that Joe Rogan likes to call Chimp Brain. For whatever reason they are wired to the point they need to kill. Imagine the helicopter scene from full metal jacket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06nIz4scvI
Those people exist. Even in Ukraine right now. There are Russian soldiers who are doing this. Everyone is the enemy and needs to be killed. Stupid ukraine for whatever they did to force me to be there. I'm going to punish ukrainians equally, they all need dying.
These people are going to push toward violence. You have to proactive to avoid this.
>Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet says that you were joking? I do not think there is not agreement on what a violent extremist is.
Great question, and what is the 'correct' solution? I dont care about the next tweet but perhaps you are banned until you delete the tweet? Commonly that's what twitter already does.
Unfortunately there is a disagreement over calls for violence. It's difficult to find examples of calls for violence from the right wing. Obviously that is well censored. Yet there's lots of examples from the left-wing that go unpunished. The entire 'punch a nazi' thing from the left is insidious and bad.
Here is a verified checkmark on the left calling for violence as an example: https://twitter.com/JeffGrubb/status/1086707229137485825
The context is that this is an off-the-cuff comment during the early part of the Maga kid Nick sandman story. The truth hadn't come out yet. That is to say that nick sandman was completely innocent and now rich after multiple settlements by media who smeared him. Obviously a ton more verified checkmarks called for violence toward the maga kid. Lets not even mention the number of non-checkmarks who never had their call to violence ever censored.
That maga hat represented much more than the situation really did.
Nice, now you just have to convince the MAGA Republican and the BLM Democrat to have an open discussion, when each of them prefers to listen to their own social bubble. Good luck with that...
Yeah, I guess we're done.
A russian cosmonaut spit on Elon when he suggested he was going to build a rocket that can be recovered and refueled. Called him insane and it can't be done. Well... don't know if you're keeping a score card...
How many short sellers of tesla lost an awful lot of money? Elon is quite the force to reckon with.
While I am not MAGA, republican, BLM, nor democrat. I have had conversations with all of those. They are all reasonable people who will listen to what you have to say.
I think there's certainly some conversations that are possible even now but so many off limits topics that are what need to be discussed. That's an easy first fix.
Then why is he Tweeting nonsense cartoons that only serve to divide people?
I mean, the right has stood still for the past 13 years? This perception is part of the problem. Notwithstanding actual studies (tweeted in reply to that comment) show the exact opposite has happened -- that the left has moved leftward slightly while the right has lurched further to the right 4x further, we know the right has moved far right since 2008 because of January 6 2021. That's proof positive that a problem exists with right-wing extremists, and to just pretend otherwise strikes me as dishonest on Musk's part.
The far right went from tea party curiosity in 2008 to full blown anti-democratic, paramilitary, conspiracy lunacy in 2022. We had an unbroken track record of 44 peaceful transfers of power until 2021, when the former president and his party plotted to overthrow the newly elected government by force. We are now learning as texts are being leaked, they spent the entirety of Nov-Dec 2020 texting each other illegal strategies to prevent Biden from assuming office on 1/20/21, and then tried very hard to implement those strategies, including going so far as having constructed bogus legal theories and a faux-constitutional process to attempt to legitimize their efforts. And of course, purposefully fomenting an insurrection and gleefully watching as it unfolded.
And you can't even say it's the fringe because that wing of the party has literally taken over the GOP. If you don't believe me, ask any of the conservatives who have left the GOP citing how far right it's moved. People will cite AOC as the most radical leftist they can think of, and even her Green New Deal is fundamentally grounded in the ideals of capitalism. Not very radical leftist if you ask me. Where are the actual radical leftists in Congress, espousing an end to American democracy, the monetary system, and capitalism? You can't find them because they're not there.
So given all that, for the new owner of Twitter to tweet that conservatives have moved absolutely nowhere in the past 13 years, shows just how completely out of touch he is with the political climate.
(for anyone looking to reply that the left has move left, I will not contest that, but the point of the cartoon is that the left has exclusively moved left while everyone else has stayed the same. This is objectively not true.)
That's what I think is strange. Same thing happens in my country, some people say that our country is turning into a far-leftist woke-nation. Even though center-right parties are in majority and most elected on the left aren't even really far-left, just Social Democrats or Greens.
It's about spending trillions more, causing more inflation, and things falling further apart.
AOC is a radical, and honestly she has no idea what she's promoting, like most of her followers.
No idea what the GND does and what they proclaim, the Greens I mentioned are the ones in my country, which isn't the US. As far as I understand nothing else than Reps and Dems matter anyways.
> AOC is a radical
I don't think so, but that could also be due to me not being from the US.
Lots of things my country does would be wrongfully labeled as socialist, communist or radical in the US.
So its no susprise to me that AOC gets labeled as radical in the US, even though she still seems pretty tame to me.
I do welcome that she's more left than what I usually hear from Democrats.
EDIT: In order for you to understand me a bit better - If I'd be able to vote in the US, I would've voted for Bernie Sanders.
You'll have to clarify specific policies because saying you support Bernie Sanders just makes it even murkier.
You could call me a Socialist, and I would be fine with it. However, I would never support an authoritarian or non-democratic system. In my opinion my country has the best political system which currently exists, so I feel fortunate for that. Still, I don't find it to be perfect. Too much lobby-ism, aka. corruption. Too much influence by industries. At least everyone has a vote and everyone can technically start a process to bring change.
Healthcare, critical infrastructure, essentials and maybe more should belong to the people of a country. The US seems to be a country belonging to those who own the most of it. Businessmen, politicians and so on. Markets have to be regulated and controlled. Tax avoidance is no different to me than tax evasion. Yada yada, feel free to ask more questions about my opinions, but I guess this is a good start.
In the economic axis, you could argue that at least a certain part of the Republicans has moved to the left. The emergence of the New Right [1][2] speaks to that. Or Trump's shtick of being against "unfair" free-trade deals. Or that Republicans are now the party of the working class.
[1]: https://scholars-stage.org/the-problem-of-the-new-right/
[2]: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right...
The depiction of the right remaining where it is from 2008 to 2021 is misguided at best. The party of George Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney is the same as the GOP today is incorrect.
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-04-20/geo...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/27/politics/mitt-romney-gop-ukra...
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/politics/john-mccain-donald-t...
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I believe that this depiction only makes sense for Elon if a different right endpoint is used - where the right is closer to Ron Paul and the left is instead the caricature at the extreme that the comic portrays.
It wouldn't surprise me if the Democratic Party has shifted to the more authoritarian end of the Y axis of the political compass - increased regulation in the wake of corruption and the increased power of corporations.
If you draw a line from where Ron Paul to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008 and put Elon on that line... then ok. 2008 make sense. Then you draw it again on 2012 https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012 and it makes sense. And again 2020 - https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 it makes sense (note the change of where Biden was in 2008 to 2020 though this is hardly scientific measurements).
However, that completely ignores the shift of the the majority of the rest of the Republican Party to the top right corner.
This chart only makes sense for Elon if the right end is held constant at the libertarian and the left end changes, but ignores the rise of the authoritarian right along with any of his changes.
As I mention here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31206510 it has been objectively measured. There have been quite a number of leftist political commentators who recently have been offended that they are labelled right-wing now. Bill Maher or Russel Brand for examples.
Carlos Maza before his disgrace wrote on the subject @vox and he basically argued that obama and truman were the same politically. That's rather insane, sure they did start a bunch of wars and bomb countless civilians. I on the otherhand don't recall Obama threatening to draft the people in a union on strike into the war. I also suspect truman and obama's stances on immigration are slightly different LOL.
Dont get me wrong. I can certainly see both parties moving left. LGBT rights are a key example. There's nothing wrong with moving left.
>The party of George Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney is the same as the GOP today is incorrect.
I would agree.
George W Bush for example actively voted against gay marriage. Even planned to make a constitutional amendment to protect marriage from homosexuals. He banned homosexuals from boy scout. I can just imagine how horrified Bush is about it being Scouts now. Even was of the opinion that it's not possible to commit a hate crime toward a gay.
Flipside, Trump went around the world promoting LGBT rights and brought the fight to the middle east and russia to decriminalize being LGBT. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-adm...
Do you feel this new republican party is going the right direction of LGBT rights? I think so. I applaud Trump here.
>I believe that this depiction only makes sense for Elon if a different right endpoint is used - where the right is closer to Ron Paul and the left is instead the caricature at the extreme that the comic portrays.
I think that's kind of the point. Objectively the far right hasn't changed much at all. In fact the common argument is that the far right has moved slightly left since that time. Which on 1 issue I clearly show the shift. Not the other way around like you suggest.
>It wouldn't surprise me if the Democratic Party has shifted to the more authoritarian end of the Y axis of the political compass - increased regulation in the wake of corruption and the increased power of corporations.
Bill Maher I believe made this point. That the left has gone so far left that everything to the right of them look right wing. You can identify this by seeing democrats like you say here.
>https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008
Political compass was questionable for some time, but it's interesting to see it here. They are offensively wrong for canadian politics.
If you see your entire political spectrum as right-wing authoritarian. That's a problem with the graph. If you're going to produce a poor graph like this you have to justify it. They dont.
>https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
The failure largely speaking is that the left vs right false dichotomy. But political compass is also self-biasing from a far left position.
Hawkins in left libertarian should be bottom left corner. The graph is biased by that much.
In a way the political polarization is visible in those graphs. It's also interesting to see why. They do the analysis by finding answers to questions. "What is your stance on abortion, gun rights, etc."...
Was never a leftist, or a political commentator with any coherent ideology at all. AFAICT, he was only ever painted by some as a leftist because of the Right painting everyone who wasn't in lockstep with the racist war fury of the early 00s as “leftist”, and because being a comedian when the Republican Party was at a local maximum of control, for a while all the easy targets for his contrarian humor were in the Right.
And he’s evolved on the positions that got him perceived as leaning left then, becoming more positive retrospectively on the Iraq War, more Islamophobic over time, etc., more openly supportive of foreign dictatorships in general.
Brand I’ve not paid much attention to, but he never struck me as particularly leftist, either.
He labels himself a leftist. His views are commonly left of center. He lives in leftyville california. He went to Cornell which doesn't produce republicans. I watched him on politically incorrect, but I only see the odd show here and there since he went to real time on hbo. I would say he's a lefty. I very much doubt there's any air of caricature in his public persona. I do believe he has been legitimate in his beliefs. Better yet makes tons of funny jokes.
If on the subject of political polarization of the left-wing has you saying Bill Maher is right wing. I rest my case.
>Brand I’ve not paid much attention to, but he never struck me as particularly leftist, either.
Like I know Bill Maher is left of center. Brand is left of him.
He even recently made a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4e8lSQy64c
Lets not forget the bernie bros who are suddenly right wing as well, joe rogan, jimmy dore, kenosha shooter guy.
The point to take away. If you think "the right" are racist war fury and islamaphobic. You should leave your country. There's somewhere else that is better for you. "the right" are your fellow countrymen, they are on your team. Do you know of lots of your country people that you like are moving somewhere? Europe, Japan/Korea? Australia? Germany? Perhaps you should reach out to them. See if it's really better?
What does this mean? Are you talking about gender or sex?
What actually happend is the break up of over archaic role models and scientific progress.
Some people today, have a decent answer to that question.
With "female brain structure" i mean traits that are commonly overrepresented in what you might see as a regular woman. I know its inaccurate but so is the opposite, by saying there are only 2 genders and men are all men. Gender is a spectrum in many dimensions and my example of male physique and female brain structure is just a simple counter example against this.
It's so exhausting hearing constant anti-trans rhetoric from all sorts of places that any support at all is nice to see. I am so tired of being a scapegoat and it's becoming terrifying because it doesn't seem to be slowing down. If anything, it seems like the world is becoming less tolerant. I frequently wonder where I can move -- if anywhere -- where my existence will not be questioned regularly.
(You may say: avoid social media, but... it's really everywhere. I don't use social media except for Hacker News.)
What do you think my reaction was, when I first heard of trans-people as a young teenager? Of course I laughed a bit and wondered why people think that genders are fictional and why a man would ever be able to be a woman.
But with time I got more curious, educated myself, thought about it, and I think I understand it pretty well now. Others just seem to hop on a bigoted bandwagon and don't even try to understand.
I think the most important part is educating others, discussing this topic. But this also requires the uninformed person the be open to change their mind. I've had 2 discussions I can remember, one with my SO and the other with my best friend. Both in a way used the same arguments as a bigot would use, just in a curious and innocent way, if you know what I mean. After talking to them they seemed to get what it's about.
I have yet to talk to a trans-person in real life about this topic, but so far I think I understand it well enough in a way that I can talk about it to others.
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> I frequently wonder where I can move -- if anywhere -- where my existence will not be questioned regularly
As sad as it is to admit, I think that's not possible. That's not even a specific issue for you I guess, lots of people get questioned about their race, sexuality, class, even if they're generally somewhere with more acceptance. Focus on people who accept you, don't get pulled down too much by haters and be proud of yourself.
> If anything, it seems like the world is becoming less tolerant
I think a large part is that trans seems to be the new topic. Race and homosexuality has been talked about, of course still not everyone is on board or agrees, but everyone knows these topics and has probably made up their opinion. With transexuality I feel that lots of people just don't know what it really is, which doesn't mean that they wouldn't accept it if they knew it. That doesn't help you at all of course, and I hope that you will once feel like you've been accepted for who you are by our societies. But I think there's still a long way to go. Stick to good people, try to educate neutral people, ignore bad people as long as you can.
All of this is coming from a white cis-male, so all I can do is try to be empathic. I wish you all the strength you need, don't give up!
Disagree, fully. Thinking that genitals define your social gender is exactly the wrong thing to do. If a Trans-Woman wants to keep her genitals as they are, then she should, and this doesn't have an effect on her gender.
If she wants to undergo surgery - fine.
Saying that Trans-Women who "keep their penises" are just men with a sexual fetish is in my opinion a very wrong and mean opinion to have.
[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Autogynephilia
Nuance is really important. I mean, I even agree with some of the concerns from social conservatives about transitioning and self-identification and "social contagions" and such. We should try to understand as well as we can, and not push anything on people they may not have felt themselves. It's important to not tell someone they're trans, pushing an identity onto them. There are discussions to be had.
... At the same time, though, that's not the whole story, as some social conservatives would have one believe, and those are not a reason to dismiss trans people. I remember having "gender dysphoria" feelings from a young age. It wasn't about dresses, or barbies, or whatever. I was uncomfortable taking my shirt off to go swimming, assuming my chest was more like my mother's or sister's than my father's or brother's. My genitals just seemed foreign to me. It got worse through puberty as these "male" features became more real.
If you'd thrown me on a deserted island with no culture, I would've still had gender dysphoria.
How do we make life comfortable for people who share in my experience? How do we make puberty less traumatic and do as much as we can to help them feel "normal"? These are questions that social conservatives dismiss as not real problems, but they were real problems for me.
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> What do you think my reaction was, when I first heard of trans-people as a young teenager?
When I was a teenager, there was no talk of trans people, anywhere. It was an unheard of topic. I still had the feelings I did.
When I first heard of them when I was a little older (~20), it was amazing to finally know I wasn't alone in the feelings I shared. I booked an appointment with a licensed mental health therapist the next month to talk about it. On the rise of awareness of trans people, I thought, "Good! They won't have to go through quite what I went through." Today, I worry they're worse off than it being unknown like it was for me.
What ended up making me feel notably better was estrogen. It was strange how well it worked, although I still had distress over my physical features until I was fully transitioned. Now that I am... my gender dysphoria is cured. I still enjoy the same hobbies, listen to the same music, read the same books, play the same video games, and even dress in a similar style. I just don't have distress over my physical features anymore. Like getting treated for any other medical issue, the treatment made the issues I experienced go away. Now the only time I feel distress is when I hear people calling for the death of trans people or blaming societal ills on us.
I don't know why I'm writing all of this, so I'm going to stop here.
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> so all I can do is try to be empathic.
I really appreciate it. All of us do. It means a lot.
> I wish you all the strength you need, don't give up!
Thanks!
100%. We have to approach this topic not only by accepting it, but also by sincerely discussing certain aspects of it. No teen should undergo surgery because of peer-pressure. On the other hand, teens who are certain that they're trans should receive the help they deserve. Difficult to navigate, but doable.
> If you'd thrown me on a deserted island with no culture, I would've still had gender dysphoria
That's something I have always wondered, and I know that the question is hypothetical, so its up to you to answer - Let's say we live in a world where gender roles and norms don't exist. People visit the doctor they need to see, but socially, people just are who they are. Would gender dysphoria still be a thing?
> Today, I worry they're worse off than it being unknown like it was for me
I know what you mean, that in a way they have a bigger spotlight on them. On the other hand, we have way more knowledge about this topic and newer generations are more open about it, so I don't think its that bad.
> I don't know why I'm writing all of this, so I'm going to stop here.
Was really interesting for me to read about your experience, but I see that a site like HN is probably not the best site for such deeply personal things. Would be really interesting to hear more about your experience. Maybe another time.
Except when they let men compete in women's sports. So if I have to choose between the new lefty version of gender, or what we had before, I'm going to choose the old way because it didn't result in comically ridiculous outcomes like that.
But - What you describe doesn't really happen that often and its made a bigger issue than it really is. Yes, it happens. Yes, some do seem to maliciously abuse it. Yes, we should talk about it and really chew it through. As long as you really mean the first word you used, 'Except', then I am fine about your comment. If you use sports as an argument or excuse not to accept trans sexuality or changes to gender roles, norms etc., then I fully disagree.
We figured it out long ago, and there were no problems before the gender studies majors got involved. Biological males and biological females should compete separately whenever there are significant physical differences between the sexes that affect outcomes. "Gender identity" is utterly irrelevant in this context.
Furthermore, using biological sex as the discriminator in sport doesn’t just create unnecessary conflict for intersex and trans players, it also excludes cis-gendered people who are talented, love sport, but just didn’t win the genetic lottery. Dividing leagues by metrics other than gender gives everybody more opportunity to participate. Again, going back to boxing, if the only metric were gender, most or all of the people outside heavyweight class wouldn’t be participating at all.
Finally, I would also argue that team sport is more interesting when greater varieties of people with different strengths and weaknesses can play together. If we designed video games the way we run most sport leagues, matches would be split up into tanks vs tanks, dps vs dps, support vs support. Congratulations, you’ve made things “more even” by separating everyone using superficial physical traits, and lost most of the interesting dynamics of pitting different strengths against different weaknesses.
Especially the part where diversity makes it more interesting in team sports.
For example, in a recent women's swimming competition, Lia Thomas, who is male, was permitted to compete on the basis of his gender identity claims.
Do you consider gender identity to be a reasonable method of categorization? Because that is the specific problematic issue here, not whether different attributes than sex could be used in general.
"For example, in a recent women's swimming competition, Lia Thomas, who is MALE, was permitted to compete on the basis of HIS gender identity claims"
At least address her with the correct pronouns, that's the least you could do in such a discussion.
I hope my comment is not interpreted as arrogant, my point is that even if we are discussing biological sex that is no reason to strip people from their preferred (social!) gender.
To rewrite your original comment, "Lia Thomas, who was born male, was permitted to compete on the basis of her gender identity claims" would be a fine and understandable statement, I think.
When talking about the person Lia Thomas, we are talking about a woman. She's Lia Thomas. Yes, she was assigned male at birth and her biological gender is male, but the person is female.
Again, I am maybe a bit petty, but I think this is exactly one of these important aspects when talking about transsexuality.
I'm not really disagreeing with what you're essentially saying, just trying to make a point about transsexuality.
Having said that, of course he's not a woman. No doctor in the world would disagree with me on that. You're deluded by some kind of ideology which puts even Idiocracy to shame. Snap out of it.
Source?
> don't understand why you're so offended
I'm not offended, why else would I mention multiple times that I'm being petty, but trying to make a point and start a conversation about transsexuality.
> Having said that, of course he's not a woman. No doctor in the world would disagree with me on that
Yet another person who doesn't understand the difference between sex and gender and instead decides to belittle me. Nothing I haven't experienced yet, still disappointing.
In a social situation involving a transgender person, it's considered polite to use pronouns that won't exacerbate any gender dysphoria they may feel. I would think that most of us have done this at some point, as a kindness.
However if we're discussing a controversial public figure, and the topic is sex versus gender identity, I feel it makes more sense to use pronouns that match up with material reality, for the sake of clarity.
Saying that trans-people who don't undergo surgery are just people with a sexual fetish is very disrespectful, I think.
Crossdressing and Transsexuality are not the same thing, as you sure know.
There's also nothing wrong with people who crossdress, by the way.
Similarly, the brains of trans people tend to have the wrong "drivers" for their body, which causes dysphoria.
Since we don't have fine-grained control over brains, we cannot "reinstall" the right driver, and it's a lot easier to fix the hardware. E.g. just as putting in the proper nVidia card to match the driver will fix the problem in a computer; adding estrogen/testosterone and maybe some surgeries allows the brain-drivers to communicate with the body correctly.
Differences in "transition completeness" make perfect sense in this way. If most of your drivers map to "female" equipment, but the "penis driver" is working properly, you have dysphoria about everything but that.
(Evidence from brain studies agree that there are variations in brain structure in trans people.)
Oh, they do know - but it’s currently politically impossible for anyone other than the most fearless of iconoclast to say, as to declare oneself critical of innate gender identity being both real and far more socially significant than biological sex is possibly the worst heresy anyone can commit on social media at the moment.
Alternative, darker analogy: everyone is on the Titanic. It's currently breaking in half and about to sink, but people like the author of this blog post are on the upper half looking down.
I'm not sure that life is wasted, but I'd suggest financial opportunity is wasted.
You just can't reach the level of financial security that the previous generation could if that previous generation had a drastically lower cost of living relative to income for the first X years of their adult life. Especially as X approaches the length of your entire career.
For many young people today inheriting a house is the only plausible way they're going to get one.
There is no next stop. Look at Canada's housing crisis if you want to see where the United States is headed.
We'll see about 'stable', there's some work I need to do if I want this to be sustainable/not something I'm at risk at crashing down from, but I've made it on the train while feeling the flames lapping at my neck.
As far as skillset goes, I would argue that it is only part of the story. Knowing the right person, is the key. You want to talk to people. You want to showcase what you can do. Stable job is doable then, but I don't know if it is easy.
And that does not even touch the simple fact that not everyone is built for that.
Is this not what happens in the real world too? The bit I'm stuck on is how it's gotten harder in 2022. At worst, it's the same as the past as far as I can see.
More broadly though, I suspect you and I just have totally different worldviews. You correctly point out that there are straightforward steps to escape the crushing hopelessness of life in the modern underclass. What I'm saying is that it should be made possible and in fact easy for people to carry on a dignified, non-hopeless existence without being coerced into chasing the absolute highest-paying job available. I suspect this comes down to personality. If you're satisfied living "defensively," putting aside what you most crave or are actually best at in favor of the thing that will keep you protected while the rest of society atrophies, well that's lucky for you. But not everyone is wired that way. If we were, I doubt things like good food or art or music would exist.
As for the dating thing, if you're not on the dating market right now you might not be aware that COVID massively messed things up. People now (myself included) are weirder than pre-2020. Human connection is harder. In fact, I'm going on IRL dates from apps most weekends now, but it's still a struggle compared to how things used to be, for me at least.
I doubt anyone is still reading by this point but I will say this: my original post was not about how my life is falling apart. I suspect I'll be fine; I'm doing more or less exactly what I want to do, all day, every day. The issue is, net net, lots of people are struggling. If people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps was a viable solution, we'd live in a utopia by now.
Regarding dating, I got off the market just before covid. But - I didn’t date for the majority of my 20’s due to pretty bad anxiety. After finally starting dating (using apps) I’d found a long term partner within 6 months. I feel like, if I could do it almost anyone can. Maybe things have got really weird but it’s worth maybe reconsidering your expectations etc.
>> The issue is, net net, lots of people are struggling.
I completely agree. Things need to change. However in the meantime, I think it’s still possible to “play the game” and succeed. The problem is it may be incredibly unfulfilling.
[1]: https://coloradosun.com/2022/04/08/bnsf-railway-attendance-p...
So what can we say? Situation Normal - all effed up!
Enjoy this phenomenon called life. You only get one.
In short: sometimes things aren't falling apart.
For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer.
Former colonies threw off their colonial yokes. Most of the "developing world" developed. Marginalized groups gained new civil rights. China and India rose to become great powers even as their former colonial masters, though declining, still enjoyed peace and prosperity.
Recognizing that there is still a lot of injustice and inequality in the world doesn't require denying all the progress that has been made.
And recognizing that we've made process shouldn't make us believe that we've done enough. Recognize what we've (or they've) achieved, be proud about it but never loose focus on making "it" even better.
(I'm just adding to your comment, not disagreeing)
> Former colonies threw off their colonial yokes.
While I don’t disagree that decolonization was progress, it ironically came at the cost of the peace that had been imposed on the colonies by their former colonial masters. Many of the world’s most conflict-stricken areas today are ex-colonies still in the process of stabilization.
The dirty secret of peace is that it is often imposed by a dominant power. Pax Romana, Pax Britannica, Pax Americana. These were peaceful times because of intense power asymmetry.
What is this "peace" you speak of? I think you want to take a closer look at the oppression that was endemic to colonization and occupation of foreign lands. One of the worse examples is Belgium's colonization of the Congo:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/feb5/belgian-king...
If an African laborer didn't produce rubber (for example), it was common to chop off a hand (his own or a family member's) to encourage him to work harder.
Congo may be on the worse end of the spectrum of colonization, but it is hardly a singular example.
If it’s literally in the name it’s not a secret. Competition for monopolies on violence are bloody. When we can sidestep that contest, we get a lasting peace.
Hard times make strong men
Strong men make good times
Good times make weak men
And weak men make hard times.
Some real life examples I've pointed too are the ghurkas in WW2 or Russian hackers.
The "Defining a generation" section is fairly short and describes the theory, and the "Timing of generations and turnings" section maps the theory onto the past ~500 years.
(Edit: got the indentation wrong, I thought the comment I was replying to was on the quote, not the "it's BS" reply. I don't think this is BS, at least not completely.)
But let's move on: what do you mean with "strong men"?
If you mean some sociopath/callous/ruthless emperor or dictator capable of starting massive wars - it hardly constitute creating good times.
If you mean men that are successful in current society... then very very few billionaires came from a childhood of hardship and poverty.
If you mean men that are capable of taking good decisions while facing difficulties and the stakes are high... then you are describing good education and good mental health, which are does in now way comes from "hard times".
All modern pedagogy and psychology sciences indicate that hardships create a lot of broken people and a few hardened narcissists.
If you mean that affluent and decadent societies become self absorbed and weaken as a whole - then I would tend to agree... but the term "strong men" would be profoundly misleading.
Really depends on who you ask in the field of psychology. There have been several perspectives contrary to what suggest (e.g., humanistic psychology, positive psychology, post traumatic growth, etc) and I don’t agree that “all modern pedagogy and psychology sciences” suggests that hardships yield nothing but broken people and narcissists.
However, I generally agree with the idea that sayings like “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” are a bit silly (they ignore the fact that what doesn’t kill you can severely weaken you for life).
I just don’t think it’s particularly helpful to take things to the other extreme either.
It's pretty much the definition of fascism - a delusional paternalistic idiot infecting everyone around him with his own neuroses and narcissism, in the name of "patriotism" and "respect."
The terms fascist and nazi seem to have lost all meaning nowadays…at least to the far left.
This makes for poor debates, where there is little nuance, fuzzy scales and hardly meaningful communication.
Fascism is a collectivist authoritarian system with regulated commerce rather than direct state control, often co-occurring with systemic racism.
The reason people don’t want to be honest about the definition is that it’s the platform of modern Democrats, who are gaslighting by calling everyone else a “fascist”:
Democrats are collectivist authoritarian.
Democrats are pushing for regulated commerce.
Democrats are rebuilding systemic racism, from rationing healthcare [2] and government aid [1] based on race to attempting to repeal civil rights laws in WA [4] and CA [3].
Democrats took to the street in acts of arson, violence, and murder to terrorize the public ahead of an election — the modern Brownshirts. [5]
Democrats are fascist.
Sources:
https://nypost.com/2021/06/15/farmers-upset-with-bidens-amer...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/race-based...
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...
https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affirmat...
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/everybody-down-wha...
That's the clearest definition of fascism I've ever heard. Where's it from?
If you read about fascism, their proponents viewed it as “Marxism 2.0” — where they could leverage the socialist ideas of collectivist authoritarianism without the problems encountered by the original Marxist revolutionaries with total state control of commerce.
A unified populace where “everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
Mussolini himself said "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power".
I'm italian, my grandfather was drafted in the balilla first at 14 and the fascist army later. And his stories of the time were all about the violence, the machismo, the open contempt for the gay, the jewish, any other minorities. That's fascism, no matter if it doesn't match your clinical idea of what fascism should or shouldn't be.
And yes, they were as silly and ridiculous as the tiki torches guys or the Jan 6 coup guys. Until they were fully in power. Then everybody stopped laughing, or wondering if they were really dangerous or not.
And to be quite honest with you, worry not - I think we'll find very, very soon how close those are compared to US democrats to actual fascists(tm).
Your link for this sweeping generalization is a single shooting in seattle months before the election of someone not old enough to vote.
> "Strong men" make fascism, not good times.
They’re not even referring to any person or distinct group of people. The statement is so overly broad that it could cover BILLIONS of people.
You’re making a mockery of the atrocities committed by actual nazis and fascists. You know what those guys did right?
You would never tell an Auschwitz survivor:
“yeah, the strong males are just like the nazis!”
Imagine how fucked up that would feel from their side.
No idea how fucked up my gramps were, but by their direct account, yes that "strong males" attitude we're talking about was quite a fascist trait.
Wtf does “strong man” even mean? Is every blue collar worker, athlete, law enforcement, first responder, military personnel…etc a fascist to you?
Why not go a step further and just say all men are fascist? Are all the food eaters fascist too? I mean all the fascist ate food after all!
It's well documented by historians.
TheOtherHobbes is using the term correctly.
To the naysayers: I recommend you travel and visit museums.
That doesn't make water bad.
I wish for people to be strong, just like I wish them good health, because it's a quality that makes for a happier life.
If one has the strength of character not to be pressured to do bad things, you get less fascists, not more.
Original comment says:
> "Strong men" make fascism, not good times.
You’ve brainwashed yourself if you believe “Strong man” = Fascist.
Strength is the ability to apply force, it's the quality of solidity, the potential for resistance, etc.
E.G: it takes strength to not act on fear and hate. Gandhi is considered a man of great strength.
Search for this saying on twitter, for example. It's been co-opted as fascist propaganda.
I take it as hard times make it clear what’s important and inspire people to work towards that.
In good times people forget.
Take note of your own phrasing: it automatically excludes him from that group.
We don't need strong men during good times and we don't need weak men during bad times.
Although now we are in neither a good nor bad time. What kind of men do we need?
You can see in modern Russia what decades of strongman rule, first in the USSR and then under Putin, looks like: Idiot conscripts hyped up on moronic propaganda getting blasted by an actual military fielded by a so-called "decadent" Western nation, with their ships being sunk by land-based weapons (and if you don't get why that's pathetic, you're not worth talking to) and their economy being destroyed by those "decadent" nations deciding to not buy from them anymore.
Strongmen create good times? Briefly, maybe, but get out before the piper demands to be paid, if anyone will have you.
Also the political perspective, what the left would characterise as good times the right would probably characterise as bad, and visa versa. At that point its no longer strong and weak men, but men of one camp and men of another.
You mean Ukraine? I would hardly say that the current situation threatens the post-ww2 peace. Compare now to ww2 and the differences are huge. ww2 claimed vastly more lives, in addition to Stalin and Hitler.
When Rome fell apart -> nothing much happened.
When Bizzantium fell -> nothing much happened.
When Nazi Germany fell -> millions of ppl died.
When Earth stops sustaining human life in quite a few areas -> billions of ppl will die.
Previously we had no big impact on Earth, now we do.
The most neutral way I can phrase this is that I think life is a planetary expression, more or less fundamentally inseparable from the planet on which it emerges. We may eventually be able to break those bonds but I don't think we're anywhere near as close to that as we think we are, nor do I think we should even try.
People have always migrated into the unknown in the hope of something better for the people who will call them ancestors. But they've also always been able to make certain promises: that the sun will shine on them as it does on us, that crops will grow even if they aren't the crops we know, that the air is safe to breathe, that god will hear them there. Some of those people have been wrong about some of those things, but they always had good reason to trust in them.
We don't have reason to believe any of that about anywhere other than here. It's possible to imagine a future so grim that the best chance for our offspring is for us to force them to risk these unknowns. It's our responsibility to prevent that choice being necessary.
We can imagine things that could change this calculation. FTL, centuries-long human cryogenics, cross-lightyear microbiology. These are fantasies. If these powers are ever in anyone's grasp, that people will be fundamentally different from what we are, even if they came from us. I don't know what will be right for them and I have no claims on what they do.
Focusing on those far off fantasies of another people is a failure to appreciate our place here, the cosmic gift we've been given with our solar system. It is an understandable weakness but we should fight it. We have enough future in front of us as ourselves, we should leave the unrecognizable far depths of it to the unrecognizable people who will inhabit it.
There are countless ways human civilization, if not the human species, can come to a rather abrupt end: supervolcano explosion blotting out the sky, directed gamma ray burst destroying the atmosphere ( hypothesized as one of the reasons for the great ordovician extinction ), comet impact acting similar to the supervolcano, random evolution creating a supervirus, and so on. And the countless ways we might manage to kill ourselves go without saying: nuclear war, nukes, deploying weaponized viruses, even far more innocuous things like fertility < 2.5 for too long.
Many of these causes can, have, and will happen abruptly.
It's chilling but correct that so much of the language around this concept talks of colonies, because that is what we're discussing. Other lives, kept far away, for some benefit to ourselves, but not to them.
Until we can present a plausible vision for "the good life" in space, away from the earth that birthed us, we should not be pursuing this goal. If we end then so be it. We have many other means to reduce that possibility, much more accessible, that we're refusing to use right now. Let's pick up that shovel and see how far we can get first.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe
Once we get humans living far enough apart that information about pandemics travels faster than pandemics do, then we should be largely invincible, barring suicide from ennui.
The larger our sub-galactic civilization, the more resilient it becomes to things like total war, total political revolution, etc.
It's really hard to be a galactic emperor at multi light-year distances. By the time you wipe out half the population of the empire, the other half will have doubled.
It's easily conceivable that 100 decades from now we could do this too.
GP said "there can't be any human civilizations that last indefinitely" and in response I gave an easily conceivable version of how human civilizations can last indefinitely.
It's been over 50 years since humans last set foot on the moon. While there's hope that man will land on the moon again by 2025, success is not assured, and a catastrophic accident could set manned space missions back by decades.
It's very easy to forget that the revolutions of Britain, France, America, Russia; it happened just a few generations ago, and upended most of the political landscape (even in countries that didn't see actual revolutions). I think what is happening is most of our modern institutions are all of roughly the same age, and after initial idealism and momentum have roughly at the same time begun to ossify and show cracks as people have started taking them for granted.
This is the first time anyone has attempted democracy on this sort of scale. Looking back we've had republics with longevity, we've had autocratic dynasties with longevity. But democracy? Besides Athens, which had a very different shape of political system, this is really a first. It's a huge political experiment, the long-term viability of which is being determined here and now by our ability to keep our shit together.
You can even see this right now, where countries do not consider themselves to be as old as the current government's age, but much older. For example, most Italians will not consider Italy to be "started" at the Republic in '46, or even the Unification in 1861, but that the country is much, much older.
Egypt, even though it was still intact by the times of Socrates, has had a number of changes and shake-ups, rises, falls, attempts to change the ancient state religion, etc.
Britain had the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the Magna Carta which amounts to a major revolution was enacted in 1215, and the Norman conquest happened in 1066. All these major events hardly occurred "a few generations ago".
I'm afraid that the idea of things largely unchanging in the past comes from our poor knowledge of history, compared to recent events.
> Egypt, even though it was still intact by the times of Socrates, has had a number of changes and shake-ups, rises, falls, attempts to change the ancient state religion, etc.
There were some dynastic changes and bumps along the road, absolutely, but my point is the overall shape of Egypt was remarkably stable even through the Persian conquest.
Nothing comparable to modernity.
You're right that there's nothing comparable to the modern era: the modern era hasn't existed long enough to have collapses that total. I think you are not applying the same level of scrutiny to ancient societies as you are to modern ones.
You have a very flexible definition of "unchanged" then. The Catholic Church pre-Charlemagne is going to be very different from Saeculum Obscurum-era, itself different from Investiture Crisis-era, itself different from the one familiar in the Late Medieval, different from Counter Reformation-era one. It's absurd to me that you think the first time it changes significantly is Vatican II!
> Ancient Egypt was already thousands of years old when Socrates harassed aristocrats in Athens.
My knowledge of Ancient Egyptian history is extremely poor, but what little I do know strongly suggests that considering it as a single stable form of government for thousands of years is even worse an error than claiming the Catholic Church was so stable and unchanging. Perhaps akin to saying that the Holy Roman Empire, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and modern Germany are all one single country that has lasted for 1200 years (because they're all called Germany).
If anything, Egypt is one hell of a counter example of institutional stability. I would also make the pedantic quibble that the HRE never called itself "Germany" until the term was incorporated into part of its much longer official title in the late 1400s. English usage started in the 1500s. It's not to say that the concept of "Germany" or "Deutschland" didn't exist, but pre-Westphalia it's difficult to make truly apt comparisons to conceptualizations of states today, and the term equivalent to Germany was used, intermittently at that, from Charlemagne's death for the next 700 years somewhat like the status of Scotland or Wales within the UK today, as in, it coexisted with the HRE as an part but not considered to have referred to the whole until the HRE lost its non-German territories an that was pretty much all that was left.
That's a bit of a myth, thrown around a lot but not quite true. It has existed in some form, but by no means remained changeless. The doctrine is substantially similar but then we can say the same thing about Judaism. Here, we're really talking about the organization, which has many issues:
-The East-West schism in 1054 tore the Catholic Church in half.
-Then there was another schism about 500 years later when Martin Luther & subsequent Reformation really splintered things, sparking many violent conflicts over the centuries. I'm sure many Catholics felt like things were falling apart then.
In lesser events that still made people feel things were falling apart:
-Rome was taken & Pope Pius was imprisoned in the Vatican during the Italian Reunification in 1870 there was probably a similar feeling.
-After Vatican II from 1962-1965 I know from my own relatives that they felt (and still feel) that the catholic church began to fall apart.
-The last few decades with countless child abuse scandals.
Clearly, that was your point. It's just completely wrong given things like the Gregorian Reform.
You'd have a better argument that the Catholic Church has been largely unchanged in the nearly 1000 years since the Gregorian reform (or, even better, the 700+ years after the series of reforms starting there and running through the 13th century councils) than the 1600 years between Constantine and Vatican II. It’d still be making the qualifier “largely” do an unreasonable amount of work, though.
I don't think we can cite 1600 years of stability for the organization at all. We may do so, somewhat, for doctrine, which is an achievement, but it's also equalled or exceeded by a few other religions.
Perhaps with regards to "scale" this may be true, but in most ways I disagree. There were hundreds of democracies in the ancient world - particularly in Greece - and they all tended to break down along similar lines. The Greeks even had a term for this - stasis - which there's a body of literature about. In stasis, the norms of democratic government are slowly eroded through an escalating series of power plays (each justified by previous excesses). This in turn erodes the public trust in institutions required for society to function. Which usually ends in violence. So I think it's a mistake to assume our situation is unique.
No, it really didn't.
> Looking back we've had republics with longevity, we've had autocratic dynasties with longevity. But democracy? Besides Athens, which had a very different shape of political system, this is really a first.
Modern democracies are almost entirely representative democracies, more like historical republics (and in fact, many of them are explicitly republics, though some are technically limited monarchies) than classical democracies.
I think the concern at hand (at least in the US) is that we’re on the eve of that fall or revolt, and whatever is born out of that, for good or ill, probably means a couple of really hard decades.
The author speaks as if "unifying", as opposed to dividing, is the redemptive quality of information technology. I don't see it as an unmitigated good and, somewhat ironically, the story of the tower of Babel is about how their single-purposedness (?) was the source of the problem altogether. Genesis 11:6: "And the Lord said, "Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do?"
One world government is bad because it will attract evil elements who use it to place all peoples under their control/taxation/exploitation, with no recourse or escape. All in the name of helping people and fighting for <insert your favourite political cause>.
By analogy, it might seem more efficient if families were to live in communal dormitories instead of their separate houses. In reality it would create stultification and at worst mass suffering when individuals took control over all aspects of other families' lives.
However you can ruin the efforts of others by demanding that their work serve a primary political agenda.
Yes this is problem when using analogy: it usually goes both ways.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
Hence, if you take a complex biochemical system and reduce it to <100 piles of atoms of specific elements, this is a lower entropy state. Mass extinctions, collapse of civilizations, that does lead to a 'more stable and ordered' state.
Disorder is desirable. Let chaos reign!
I remember the old Police song having the line "there is no political solution for our troubled evolution." They say we live in the Anthropocene epoch, an epoch dominated by man. The problem is that's not the world we evolved in and for humans evolution isn't just a matter of physical adaptation but social adaptation as well. Our social structures we've built over the millennia no longer work the same in this new world we've built. We have to evolve, but social evolution typically involves violence and upheaval and would appear that everything is falling apart.
It is perhaps fortunate that the Ukraine situation is demonstrating once again that just about the only time America can function in a coordinated manner is when there is an agreed upon external threat. Perhaps the next external threat will be carbon climate cancer? Or will our internal divisions prevent us from effectively dealing with that. It is going to be a rough ride one way or the other. The current war will be our first experience with global famines since the so called green revolution.
Americans rarely unite against something that's partially and/or possibly our fault.
Social division is definitely higher than it’s ever been in decades.
Racism and sexism is less prevalent but social division is actually higher than ever.
(Seconding the recommendation though, it is a good book.)
Meanwhile, in the 1960s people were burning their draft cards, starving themselves to be underweight for the draft, or fleeing to canada. Returning soldiers at the airport would be spat on by protesters. Black people regularly had stones thrown at them or worse and no one made any news article about it. Activist groups were actually armed, and serious situations occured with that. Teenage girls were congregating in a canyon outside of los angeles to join a serial killers sex cult. Groups of people were travelling the country in a school bus turning square people on to acid and mushrooms. That was the peak of social disorder.
We are all in line now, despite what the narratives in the media make us think. People hold opinions strongly, but they are of a limited set of prescribed opinions from the media. Find any thread online about a given topic you've read about online before, and the comments will all be the same and predictable. We aren't exposed to as much unorthodox thought as our population used to be back before global media had total influence on how we sourced our information about the world.
The US has had a strong anti-protest culture for decades. March in the street, for anything, and the response is near universal cynicism and derision of the "hippies". With OWS this was apparent with traditional news coverage that constantly focused on the most ridiculous looking protestors
However you have a point, media is very potent factor; You see that in Russia, where the state has a monopoly on the press, and old TV managed to persuade a majority in necessity of this senseless war, which is going on right now.
The new media thing is creating a kind of monopoly on information for your own tribe, because it trains everyone to discard any info that comes from the other side of the fence. So there is a strong element of social control here. (don't know if Mr. Musk will manage to change that, but he seems to be trying...)
Here is the documentation of the list feature on twitter: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-lists
They should advertise this feature and make it easier to use, if you ask me...
Still, the decline in quality of goods and services seems to be backed up by data as well as anecdote. I go to schools, churches, businesses. I see lightbulbs out. Things that are broken that could be repaired if only someone would put in 10 minutes of effort. My opinion: Everything is maybe falling apart in America specifically. I hope I'm wrong, for my childrens' sake.
The worst thing is feeling defeated, even though you could actually be helping. Doesn't even matter if you're carrying a shot glass or a whole barrel full of water, at least you're doing the best you can.
Selling NFT's of the buckets.
I suspect that the world after WW1, where they also faced many similar situations at the same time (pandemic, financial crash, etc), also looked pretty incompetent to everyone.
In the US it's more important to be rich than to be moral or right.
But you can't deny mutuality, interdependence, and rational modelling of collective consequences without getting into some very broken places and bad outcomes.
I did not think I'd see such blatant racism on this website.
Also I strongly recommend another Haidt book called "The Righteous Mind".
Bosnia was about to be destroyed and more recently, attempted to be divided by neighbors and they're still fine.
Look at anywhere that's not Americas or Western Europe.
It is debatable whether Bosnia is fine or will be fine. It is in danger of new rounds of violence. For that matter, even if Ukraine wins, which I hope, it wont be fine. Wars do actually damage places where it all happens and price is paid for many years after.
Part of the strength of the nation, however, is that everything is a big deal, all the time. This causes things to (eventually) get dealt with.
Residential structures are made from ever lower quality materials that are thinner than ever and with shorter lifespan (accelerated aging, necessitating sooner replacement).
Foods are being stuffed with ever larger quantities of fillers such as corn, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and air to make the package look big even though there is nearly nothing nutritious inside.
It's a mirage.
As an American, allow me to be even more inflammatory. Americans think that everything is falling apart because we've collectively never had a real problem in our life.
The amazing thing is as an American, I can ignore TV, all sources of news, fights on Facebook, etc. I've done it for years. Nothing bad happens. In fact the only effect is that I am blissfully unaware of all the minutia that are leading people to believe everything is falling apart.
It's true that the US has a lot going for it. No enemies to its north or south, still the largest economy, high levels of education, etc. At the same time, standards of living have seen a large drop over the last two years. This appears to be intensifying the arguments over social issues, and increasing incitement to violence. What I see when I look at places that are not the Americas or Western Europe is that the peace and wealth people take for granted can be lost so easily.
Most people are still alive and life goes on but it is not a road you want to go down if you can avoid it.
What we are experiencing is acceleration. Left-wing accelerationists want to bring on capitalism's end-stage calamities in order to foster a revolution that will overthrow the bourgeoisie. Right-wing accelerationists think that worsening economic conditions will trigger some sort of white-nationalist boogaloo garbage. I'm not an accelerationist, for my part, but it's pretty clear to me that acceleration is happening. Capitalism has been in objective decline for decades, but now the decline is happening faster than most of us ever imagined.
There's an inevitable sequence to this sort of thing. Capitalism becomes corporate capitalism ("Stage 2") due to business consolidation. This requires the proliferation of middle management positions, both to curtail inefficiency and to prop up a middle class (preventing overthrow) while small businesses die, so what you get is an evolution into managerial capitalism. ("Stage 3") At this point, bureaucratic diversions make it hard to know what is happening, and few people--least of all the overpaid boneheads on top, who can't tell when they're being lied to--know if their managers (or consultants) are any good, so this leads to reputation capitalism ("Stage 4") in which there is no such thing as truth--there is only what people say, and power resides in the ability to control what others say. (In other words, might makes right.) This leads to widespread, deliberate misinformation that proliferates; the system begins to shake, but the nature of post-truth capitalism ("Stage 5") allows it to preserve its own stability, for a little while longer, if it can convince a large number of people that they're either already winning (bourgeois false consciousness) or destined to win (fascist fuckery). This isn't hard at all, in a world where nothing means anything, and in which the convincing telling of lies is the surest path to prestigious jobs and high incomes.
We now live in a world where having a national reputation is necessary just to get an average job--hence the pathological obsession of the young with fame and "influencers"-- and in which admission to the most prestigious universities is as competitive as it has ever been but the product is the worst it's ever been. We have the right wing using fascism to win; we have the left wing diverted into callout-culture identity politics and virtue signaling instead of actual change. The dysfunction of capitalism can no longer be contained. We have stagflation now and will see worldwide food riots in a year or two. Read up on the Russian 1990s if you want to know what the capitalistic world (which is now the entire world) is in for.
Is everything falling apart? It's hard to say. It'll get a lot worse in the short term, but humans and human civilization are resilient.
I wish that Wright had focused more on Haidt's concrete suggestions in his article. For example, towards the end of his article, Haidt writes,
"Reforms should reduce the outsize influence of angry extremists and make legislators more responsive to the average voter in their district. One example of such a reform is to end closed party primaries, replacing them with a single, nonpartisan, open primary from which the top several candidates advance to a general election that also uses ranked-choice voting. A version of this voting system has already been implemented in Alaska, and it seems to have given Senator Lisa Murkowski more latitude to oppose former President Trump, whose favored candidate would be a threat to Murkowski in a closed Republican primary but is not in an open one."
And that's an idea that may have pros and cons! But it focuses the debate on specific proposals to improve the situation, rather than just a general referendum on "How Bad Are Things?"
Note: No, reddit isn't a good source, but It was the first one that i found. Searching for Camille Paglia and transgender you will find more information about it..
The day it really becomes "the science" is the day I will lose hope in the rest of the apparatus. Lysenkoism [2] be damned.
[1]: And by that I mean believing that we should behave as if there are no differences between biological females and MTF, or that it's all just a "social construct", or that we have a moral duty to "deconstruct" all social constructs which interfere with some ideology.
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
I don’t have that, the idea that it’s all just a social construct is so embedded in the way I see the world, I just don’t see how anything about sexuality or biology are immutably connected to gender identity. To me the two are completely divorced from each other.
> To me the two are completely divorced from each other.
Some of it certainly could be. But insisting that it's all just a social construct makes it hard to explain things which are prevalent and similar across different cultures. (e.g. females growing their hair, or them being generally "cleaner", or intonation differences, etc.)
Or even more broadly, the fact that males and females of different cultures can be attracted to each other, even though the exact gender expressions might be different.
[1]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOHlDIxWQAAaJwX?format=jpg&name=...
[2]: It certainly does for many people, to the extent that the scene could come from a South Park episode: https://www.vgr.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2022_03/FB_IMG_164...
Also, women not being “woman enough” for sports has been an issue prior to the idea of transition. See Surya Bonaly and Caster Semenya
Climate change, wealth gaps, and both combined. (Richer people can escape the effects of climate change more easily). I fear that wealth will become even more important, furthering the gap between classes even more.
> what does society mean to you
Depends on what context. Of course for my direct political environment, people living in the same country as I are the biggest society I can lump together. But I'm not very nationalistic so I try to think about what's best for people globally. I think the most important society to me is all humans on earth. Else, every nation or group just looks after themselves.
> would you consider in the context of your reply that there may be different perspectives
Yes, but - I fail to see what group of people transsexuality would be the biggest danger to. Even when it goes against your world-view or religion, there is no harm done at all when someone is transsexual. It just goes against ones opinions.
That's why I disagree heavily with the sentiment that "when men turn into women, that is a sign that the end is near". If transsexuality is more dangerous to a person than climate change, social injustice or other big topics, it really just does feel like fear-mongering and blaming arbitrary boogeymen for what's going wrong at the moment.
I recommend this book for data that supports this if folks haven't read it already:
https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/
That said, I am of the view that the mindset of optimizing for efficiency and the tools we've acquired over the last 50-100 years for doing so may, in addition to the benefits, have unintended consequences on a large scale. A couple of examples; in yesterday's discussion of nurses want to leave the profession, it was observed that the buyers of EMRs are optimizing for different things than the nurses that use them, to the detriment of nurses and patients. And, Boeing's products may be less safe now that it is optimized for capital rather than engineering.
To vastly oversimplify, it seems to me that optimizing for efficiency will eventually remove all margin for error, and so errors will be more frequent. The larger the span of influence of the optimization, the more these errors will accumulate in all kinds of places and all kinds of ways. So, my running joke is that the spreadsheet may be the death of Western civilization, and it remains less funny to me as time goes on.
That may be a problem that can be addressed though. Neglecting resilience to over-optimize for efficiency seems like it's symptom of stability. People, as a whole, seem to lack the wisdom to not fool themselves that they can ignore long term risks while the short term is good, especially when we're talking about spans greater than generation.
However, a lot of that stability is getting disrupted right now: the pandemic, a big land war in Europe, supply chains are fucked, etc. The war especially has blown up a lot of naive assumptions that had been taken for granted until a couple months ago. I think here's a decent chance that for the next few decades, Western civilization will value resilience far more than it has over the last few.
So what happens to what are now "excess" people? The answer to that question is gonna define pretty much everything.
If you’re referencing to automation taking over…I fully agree with your point. It seems like half the people around me have made up jobs.
Automation can make all the things they would want. Why do they need you around again? Especially when having you around creates pollution that makes things worse for them....
This is why we have constant revolution throughout human history.
Putting all moral consideration aside, imagine you could totally depopulate two continents of your choosing. Why should any problem of modern economics be solved by that?
The concept of depopulation is simple enough to fit in a single sentence, it leaves out the real problem and its vast complexity (our linear economies and lifestyles attached to it), conveniently some one else is to blame and with all that, it is compatible to xenophobia. It ticks all boxes.
Of course, no problem would be fixed, the only thing you would buy with depopulation is time. The real problem is our unsustainable system, which is independent from any population count.
>We are too many people for what?
Is the question you fail to ask and answer. And going further this path of stupidly easy enemy stereotypes leads to all the societal atrocities you may have heard of.
I mean it's just science that the planet can only sustain X people at Y life style (you can swap out "life style" for "level of consumption"). Like there is hard rules of physics about quantity of water, minerals, et cetra. So you can either lower X, lower Y, or try to side step the problem entirely by going to other planets/mine asteroids/magic to increase the resource pool.
The sustainable level of consumption is dependent on population.
A glass can hold X amount of water. You add X plus 1 and water spills out. "Guess the glass couldn't sustain X water!" is what you are claiming?
Systems can only be sustained within certain parameters. There is no magical system that is always sustainable regardless of parameters. But it sounds like we are saying basically the same thing in any case.
Consumption can go down and more population can be supported. Or consumption can continue at current levels but population will have to go down. (and that level it would have to go down might be truly horrific)
Since most such pieces are written by journalists, or written by people who think about these things but are also writers, they tend to focus on the idea distribution medium aspect of today's technology. So that would be the internet, or social media platforms, or chat platforms, etc. That's the most easily comparable part to past information technologies such as the printing press.
But the novel danger with what we're facing today is not the fact that everyone is on social media, or that stuff can go viral. Even though these are turbocharged versions of past technologies, they are still versions of past technologies (being turbocharged can still make it meaningfully different, but for now I'll ignore that). The novel danger is personalized data collection. It's the fact that major companies can built extremely accurate and granular profiles of every single person on their platforms.
This is completely unprecedented. Throw in even rudimentary AI, and I can target my message to match every individual's unique psychological profile. This was never possible in the past. The most you could do is target something based on a few broad aspect of someone's personality. Where they lived, what religion they followed, what language they spoke, etc. But there were thousands if not millions of people who filled that mold, and there were vast variations within those people, which still allowed for non conformity.
Today, however, you can target every individual and even the same individual differently depending on whether it's the morning, or evening, or if they are working or relaxing.
It's this that's truly novel and truly dangerous. You don't even need Social media to be involved for this to be a problem. The Chinese government, for example, famously has a highly intrusive citizenry score for its citizens based on a variety of such micro targeted factors. And pretty much every government across the world is also doing the same. Corporations have gone even further because they have all the data.
We have never had a unified cultural perspective on this phenomenon -- it is either an artifact of regressive politics, a warning sign of the limits to growth, a reflection of deep failings in the basic structure of society, a punishment from Heaven for our disregard for tradition, or [choose as many as you like]. But as it continues to become more visible, the possible conclusions clash more and more. So while social media appears to create divisions in society, I don't think it's the only cause, and I don't think the only causes are things for which we can so easily allocate blame.
Starvation and price rises will provide new opportunities to fearmonger and divide. Social media is ill equipped to stop Russia and others from using it to manipulate fearful people.