September 2018

spacepatrolofficer:

balioc:

awhiffofcavendish:

tilthat:

TIL 1 in 10 Americans now takes an antidepressant; among women in their 40s and 50s, the figure is 1 in 4

via reddit.com

FREEDOM. PROGRESS.

In our degenerate age, many more people are undergoing cancer treatment than ever before!  A clear signal that our bodily health is getting ever-worse!

The relevant question, of course, is “in other times and places, how many people were suffering in such a way that they would have benefited from taking antidepressants?”  (Also, I suppose, “how many of those people would have been women in their 40s and 50s?”)

This is, of course, not the sort of question for which useful data can be found.  But I certainly have my suspicions. 

@balioc

the implicit point made here is that antidepressants are overprescribed. it wouldnt be the first time doctors overprescribe medicine and so this factoid is presented in a context of mistrust of pharmaceutical companies and doctors.

another question that should be asked is how effective are antidepressants really in mitigating the effects of depression. it’s certainly a step in the right direction that our society is at least acknowledging that mental health is something to be treated. however, in my statistically insignificant experience with people who have taken antidepressants, it has made them apathetic to the world around them (which caused them to stop taking it) or simply not worked.

that being said, a drug is not put on the market if it has not been shown to work at least some of the time. but I am of the opinion that simply taking a drug to balance out your neurotransmitters may not get to the root of why you are feeling depressed in the first place and will possibly provide only temporary relief.

That…might be the implicit point.  If so, it’s not being argued very well – you’d need some kind of actual evidence, or argument, to the effect that the antidepressant prescription rate should be noticeably lower – but it’s something I’d be prepared to believe, and at the very least I have no particular dog in that fight.

One way or another, though, that’s not the “implicit point” that a lot of the readers are getting from that post, judging from the comments. 

They’re reading it as “modern American society is terrible, especially for middle-aged women, which is why so many people are trying to relieve their environment-induced discontent with chemicals; if we lived good and healthy lives like our ancestors lived, those people would be doing much better and wouldn’t need or want antidepressants.”

And frankly I suspect that this is what the OP intended.  But it hardly matters, in a world where the author is dead.

awhiffofcavendish:

tilthat:

TIL 1 in 10 Americans now takes an antidepressant; among women in their 40s and 50s, the figure is 1 in 4

via reddit.com

FREEDOM. PROGRESS.

In our degenerate age, many more people are undergoing cancer treatment than ever before!  A clear signal that our bodily health is getting ever-worse!

The relevant question, of course, is “in other times and places, how many people were suffering in such a way that they would have benefited from taking antidepressants?”  (Also, I suppose, “how many of those people would have been women in their 40s and 50s?”)

This is, of course, not the sort of question for which useful data can be found.  But I certainly have my suspicions. 

“Everything has failed every time it’s been tried.  We have not thus far created a society that would inspire a sane person to say, ‘yep, that’s good enough.’”             – Me

“True imperial monarchy has never been tried.”  – Also Me

Point being: I’d take it as a kindness if, in parsing my weird irritable political mutterings, you didn’t just pattern-match to the most obvious historical analogue.  It seems likely that I am talking about something pretty different.

invertedporcupine:

discoursedrome:

Also just in general wrt “the king wants the same things as the peasants but the barons don’t”, I’m really skeptical of the amount of faith that monarchists tend to invest in that relationship because it seems like it has at least as much to do with the idea of kingly purity (e.g. “if only the Czar knew”) as with the actual relationship. But even where that relation exists, it’s not a statement that rulers of larger domains are more likely to agree with the peasants. The way the “king and peasants vs. the aristocracy” setup works even when it works is that the king is playing the two factions against one another and using the perceived legitimacy of his mandate – something lesser aristocrats lack – to defend himself against the faction otherwise most dangerous to his rule.  If you fragment that kingdom and now every barony is a tiny kingdom with its own court, the political class relations change completely; you can’t extrapolate them from how the region functioned as a province of a larger entity.

Honestly, having to read the phrase “the king wants the same things as the peasants” with my actual eyeballs….@balioc often writes interesting things but this one makes me wonder if he’s dropped in from a parallel universe.

The king wants peace in the land, and a good harvest that will result in him getting lots of taxes rather than lots of excuses.  Sounds pretty good from a peasant perspective to me.  Certainly better than the baron’s “I want to build up a massive army so I can beat my rival and maybe overthrow the king” or “I want to sleep with your wife.” 

…I mean, yes, this is a gross oversimplification, sometimes the king also wants you to go fight and die in a war in some country you’ve never heard of, or he wants to spend a ton of gold on a giant statue of his father.  But as a rule of thumb…

discoursedrome:

balioc:

discoursedrome:

apricops:

There are two dangerous, interconnected ideas. The first is simple enough: the idea that history is a constant march towards social progress, where any backslides are temporary hiccups.

The second, more complicated one is an overly materialist view of history – that is to say, judging the quality of life in an empire simply by the variety of goods available, rather than how those goods were obtained. A view of history that leaves out some of the most important aspects of daily life: autonomy, freedom from fear, and the ability to have control over one’s life and surroundings.

A friend once asked me what it might’ve been like to watch the shift from Roman occupation to “the Dark Ages,” implying it must’ve felt like a great loss to witness it. I pointed out (with what I hope was tact and factual accuracy, both of which I often lacked in younger years) that the same ‘collapse’ that took the imported wine and silk and olive oil out of the market places also took most of the slaves out of the silver mines and the bloodthirsty tax collectors away from the fields. A provincial governor might be able to build aqueducts and hot baths, but a local chieftain or warlord would speak the same language as you, and if you got together with a few dozen or hundred fellow peasants, you could represent a threat big enough to force the chieftain to listen to you, while to a provincial governor, a few hundred angry peasants would be met with a sneer and suppression by the provincial Roman governor.

It is, in fact, from many of the “touchstones of Western history” that we find the answers to where life began to get so miserable, and realize that issues of social justice once thought to be forever and universal are actually much more recent:

It was the Renaissance that brought misogyny to new heights. It was the printing press and the Luther Bible that brought biblically “justified” misogyny into the homes of shopkeepers and cobblers. It was the Enlightenment that brought “proof” of the “scientifically justified” inferiority of Africans and planted the seeds of modern racism. It was the Industrial Revolution that brought notions of work to their crushingly orderly modern form and made the former agrarian lifestyle of communal, flexible, self-directed work an impossibility.

Every proper noun of Western history that has propelled society forward has done so by dragging the marginalized and the lower classes with them, tying them up and letting their bodies scrape along the road.

I don’t think I’d go as far as this, because if you want to suggest in the primitivist style that all the whiggy stuff actually made life worse then that still implies a linear progression of history except in a bad way, which I’m not sure is any more accurate. Ironic inversion of triumpahlist narratives has a way of supporting those narratives, in the same sense as (for instance) the “white people ruined everything” narrative indirectly entrenches the white nationalist mythos it positions itself against by using its framing as a reference point. History is a murky stew and it would be pretty hard to attribute a narrative structure to if if everyone from the periods described had to sign off on it.

That said, I think there are some useful takeaways from this sort of approach. One, as you say, is that you can’t judge quality of life by diversity of material goods or public works; more generally, that the “greatness” or “importance” of a period from a historical perspective doesn’t say much about how nice it was for common people to live in that period, and a lot of energy is spent obscuring that fact.

The other takeaway is that small local rule tends has a lot of advantages – it takes fewer people to overturn and the ruler is more responsive to your needs. Like, I remember memecucker was complaining about Hawaiian nationalist monarchism recently and my feeling is that while functional monarchism is a lot worse than democracy, the Hawaiians probably still got better representation from a local monarch than they do from a legislature in DC. The reason I don’t go from there to the radical localist/nationalist stance that this is a strict improvement is that lots of little sovereign polities tend to brutally fight all the time, and the only reliable way to prevent constantwar between neighbours is to have them under the umbrella of some sort of larger power. But I do think this makes a case for a significant degree of regional autonomy and representation within larger bodies. The modern US in particular seems inadequately federated for a country of its size and diversity.

The other takeaway is that small local rule tends has a lot of advantages – it takes fewer people to overturn and the ruler is more responsive to your needs.

That is not a good thing.

Or, to put it in different words: “more responsive to whose needs?”

Rulers answer to the stakeholder power-brokers who can push them off their perch.  The more rulers you have, the more catering to power-brokers you have.  And the further you go down the social ladder, in terms of where the power is centered, the more the local power-brokers are actually going to be interested in messing with with the people around them. 

The king wants basically the same thing as most of the peasants, most of the time.  The barons really don’t. 

This is to say nothing of conflict between sovereign polities, which is also a major concern, as you say.

I mean regular people are gonna get fucked no matter what dude, it mostly seems to be a matter of what can be done within that envelope

They’re more able to mess with you, but you’re more able to mess with them as well. The former dominates when it’s just you, or just a small minority of the population (c.f. “you can’t fight city hall”). But the latter dominates when there’s broad-based and widespread hostility to the leadership or its policies. The benefit of smaller-scale, more-local government is that it takes less consensus to achieve that state. (Similarly, the smaller-scale things are, the closer the local power brokers are to you in culture and class and in their overall economic interests. Never the same, but closer.)

Sure, the President isn’t going to fuck you personally over in the way the chief of police might. But the President can fuck your entire city, possibly your entire region, with the same impunity as the chief of police can fuck you personally. The personal security-through-obscurity you enjoy for being unlikely to attract the individuality hostility of the rulership isn’t much tradeoff against that.

So just to be clear from the outset: this is a very silly conversation, we’re both waving our hands trying to compare two things that are super-abstract, empirical details are going to end up making most of the difference here and empirical details will matter in a million different ways every time.

That said, let’s be very silly!

They’re more able to mess with you, but you’re more able to mess with them as well. The former dominates when it’s just you, or just a small minority of the population (c.f. “you can’t fight city hall”). But the latter dominates when there’s broad-based and widespread hostility to the leadership or its policies.

True.  In general, I do not trust “broad-based and widespread hostility” to exist for good reasons rather than bad reasons.  It’s not that hard to whip up an outraged mob, and in general I would prefer that the technocratic authorities have the structural fortitude to resist outraged mobs.  Governments can be very bad and very stupid,  but in theory you can improve on them; you can’t really improve on people-at-large.  (Until you can.  But, uh, that’s another discussion.)

Sure, the President isn’t going to fuck you personally over in the way the chief of police might. But the President can fuck your entire city, possibly your entire region, with the same impunity as the chief of police can fuck you personally. The personal security-through-obscurity you enjoy for being unlikely to attract the individuality hostility of the rulership isn’t much tradeoff against that.

If the chief of police is fucking you over personally, it’s probably for one of two types of reason:

(a) He has a personal grudge.  Your son was rude to his son in school, or he wants you to lose your land so that he can buy it super-cheap, or something.  This happens all the time, and it’s basically always bad.

(b) He is serving as an ersatz tribal chieftain, trying to keep the peace by mediating between squabbling local powers, and you make the most convenient sacrifice.  This also happens all the time, and at least some of the time it’s genuinely “for the best,” in a very ruthlessly utilitarian sort of way.  Once you’re in the middle of a huge ugly fight, there’s much to be gained by ending as quickly and overall-painlessly as possible, even if that outcome is hideously unjust in a distributive sense.

But we don’t have to let ourselves get into that kind of situation at all!  Atomized individualism is totally a viable plan!  “No one gets to wield local-level power over anyone, and you live your private personal lives in private peace, and if you don’t like someone you just ignore him” is a dream we’ve already achieved [in some places] [for the very lucky].  And we can make it ever-more-viable as we get better at creating and distributing surplus resources!

***********

If the President is fucking over your entire city –

– well, maybe it’s because he’s a lunatic and he’s decided that he really hates New York for some reason.  That can happen.  Or maybe it’s because he’s playing politics at a larger level, and trying to placate a base that hates New York for cultural reasons.  (One reason of many that “accountability in leadership” is often more curse than blessing.) 

But, more often than anything else, it’s because fucking over your entire city is actually the right thing to do on a macro level.  Your resources will do more good if they’re redirected to some other region.  You will suffer less than some other city if you’re made to bear the brunt of some unpleasant thing.

I mean, sucks for you and everyone around you.  But in fact different polities, which have different interests, are sometimes in conflict.  There is not a way around that kind of situation.   

And I would rather that this issue be decided by well-meaning technocrats, even imperfect ones, than by a contest of political strength between cities.  That second option has no correlation with outcome quality.

discoursedrome:

apricops:

There are two dangerous, interconnected ideas. The first is simple enough: the idea that history is a constant march towards social progress, where any backslides are temporary hiccups.

The second, more complicated one is an overly materialist view of history – that is to say, judging the quality of life in an empire simply by the variety of goods available, rather than how those goods were obtained. A view of history that leaves out some of the most important aspects of daily life: autonomy, freedom from fear, and the ability to have control over one’s life and surroundings.

A friend once asked me what it might’ve been like to watch the shift from Roman occupation to “the Dark Ages,” implying it must’ve felt like a great loss to witness it. I pointed out (with what I hope was tact and factual accuracy, both of which I often lacked in younger years) that the same ‘collapse’ that took the imported wine and silk and olive oil out of the market places also took most of the slaves out of the silver mines and the bloodthirsty tax collectors away from the fields. A provincial governor might be able to build aqueducts and hot baths, but a local chieftain or warlord would speak the same language as you, and if you got together with a few dozen or hundred fellow peasants, you could represent a threat big enough to force the chieftain to listen to you, while to a provincial governor, a few hundred angry peasants would be met with a sneer and suppression by the provincial Roman governor.

It is, in fact, from many of the “touchstones of Western history” that we find the answers to where life began to get so miserable, and realize that issues of social justice once thought to be forever and universal are actually much more recent:

It was the Renaissance that brought misogyny to new heights. It was the printing press and the Luther Bible that brought biblically “justified” misogyny into the homes of shopkeepers and cobblers. It was the Enlightenment that brought “proof” of the “scientifically justified” inferiority of Africans and planted the seeds of modern racism. It was the Industrial Revolution that brought notions of work to their crushingly orderly modern form and made the former agrarian lifestyle of communal, flexible, self-directed work an impossibility.

Every proper noun of Western history that has propelled society forward has done so by dragging the marginalized and the lower classes with them, tying them up and letting their bodies scrape along the road.

I don’t think I’d go as far as this, because if you want to suggest in the primitivist style that all the whiggy stuff actually made life worse then that still implies a linear progression of history except in a bad way, which I’m not sure is any more accurate. Ironic inversion of triumpahlist narratives has a way of supporting those narratives, in the same sense as (for instance) the “white people ruined everything” narrative indirectly entrenches the white nationalist mythos it positions itself against by using its framing as a reference point. History is a murky stew and it would be pretty hard to attribute a narrative structure to if if everyone from the periods described had to sign off on it.

That said, I think there are some useful takeaways from this sort of approach. One, as you say, is that you can’t judge quality of life by diversity of material goods or public works; more generally, that the “greatness” or “importance” of a period from a historical perspective doesn’t say much about how nice it was for common people to live in that period, and a lot of energy is spent obscuring that fact.

The other takeaway is that small local rule tends has a lot of advantages – it takes fewer people to overturn and the ruler is more responsive to your needs. Like, I remember memecucker was complaining about Hawaiian nationalist monarchism recently and my feeling is that while functional monarchism is a lot worse than democracy, the Hawaiians probably still got better representation from a local monarch than they do from a legislature in DC. The reason I don’t go from there to the radical localist/nationalist stance that this is a strict improvement is that lots of little sovereign polities tend to brutally fight all the time, and the only reliable way to prevent constantwar between neighbours is to have them under the umbrella of some sort of larger power. But I do think this makes a case for a significant degree of regional autonomy and representation within larger bodies. The modern US in particular seems inadequately federated for a country of its size and diversity.

The other takeaway is that small local rule tends has a lot of advantages – it takes fewer people to overturn and the ruler is more responsive to your needs.

That is not a good thing.

Or, to put it in different words: “more responsive to whose needs?”

Rulers answer to the stakeholder power-brokers who can push them off their perch.  The more rulers you have, the more catering to power-brokers you have.  And the further you go down the social ladder, in terms of where the power is centered, the more the local power-brokers are actually going to be interested in messing with with the people around them. 

The king wants basically the same thing as most of the peasants, most of the time.  The barons really don’t. 

This is to say nothing of conflict between sovereign polities, which is also a major concern, as you say.

Silicon Valley Liberalism

sullyj3:

balioc:

sullyj3:

balioc:

thathopeyetlives:

balioc:

cptsdcarlosdevil:

A while ago, I stumbled across the following study of the political opinions of tech entrepreneurs, which found a distinctive pattern. Tech entrepreneurs tend to have liberal positions on social issues, globalism, and redistribution, while having conservative opinions on regulation.

Specifically, according to the questionnaire, tech entrepreneurs believe the following:

Globalism

• We should not pay…

View On WordPress

Taking this at face value, it is possible that my own politics could be fairly described as “Silicon Valley monarchism.”

What does that mean?

It’s always dangerous to delve into object-level politics casually, but in a very very basic and surface-level sense:

Freedom of speech, and other basic liberties, are very important.  Universal distribution of wealth is very important.  Avoiding wars and other destructive factional conflicts is very important.  Having government that will act as though all individuals possess moral salience is very important.  Capable technocratic management is very important.

All these things are so important, in fact, that they should be defended by a Leviathan of unparalleled power and unlimited domain.  The vagaries of public opinion cannot be relied upon to do the job, and neither can any entity that must struggle continually to maintain control. 

Where are you gonna find a friendly leviathan, though. This idea seems to suffer from the same problem as communism, where some part of the system needs to be infallible and completely benevolent for it to succeed (leviathan vs dictatorship of the proletariat)

Short version: it’s a serious problem, but engineering a friendly leviathan sounds so much easier than trying to jury-rig something friendly out of a large social system with a million moving parts. 

There are also real issues with getting the system set up in the first place [conquest], and with securing and stabilizing it before it’s had the chance to become the recognized default [legitimacy].  I don’t mean to downplay things like this, I just think they’re more tractable than the equivalent problems in pretty much any other scheme.

Do you have previous writing where you go into more detail? I disagree for a number of reasons but I don’t want to make you go through counterarguments if you’ve made them a bunch of times before or something

Not on this topic.  And in fact I don’t especially intend to discuss it further, right now.  As I said, diving into object-level politics is dangerous; trying to explain a complicated network of related thoughts, or mount a serious defense of something, when you haven’t done the masses of necessary setup and prep work, seems almost certain to go very badly.

Silicon Valley Liberalism

sullyj3:

balioc:

thathopeyetlives:

balioc:

cptsdcarlosdevil:

A while ago, I stumbled across the following study of the political opinions of tech entrepreneurs, which found a distinctive pattern. Tech entrepreneurs tend to have liberal positions on social issues, globalism, and redistribution, while having conservative opinions on regulation.

Specifically, according to the questionnaire, tech entrepreneurs believe the following:

Globalism

• We should not pay…

View On WordPress

Taking this at face value, it is possible that my own politics could be fairly described as “Silicon Valley monarchism.”

What does that mean?

It’s always dangerous to delve into object-level politics casually, but in a very very basic and surface-level sense:

Freedom of speech, and other basic liberties, are very important.  Universal distribution of wealth is very important.  Avoiding wars and other destructive factional conflicts is very important.  Having government that will act as though all individuals possess moral salience is very important.  Capable technocratic management is very important.

All these things are so important, in fact, that they should be defended by a Leviathan of unparalleled power and unlimited domain.  The vagaries of public opinion cannot be relied upon to do the job, and neither can any entity that must struggle continually to maintain control. 

Where are you gonna find a friendly leviathan, though. This idea seems to suffer from the same problem as communism, where some part of the system needs to be infallible and completely benevolent for it to succeed (leviathan vs dictatorship of the proletariat)

Short version: it’s a serious problem, but engineering a friendly leviathan sounds so much easier than trying to jury-rig something friendly out of a large social system with a million moving parts. 

There are also real issues with getting the system set up in the first place [conquest], and with securing and stabilizing it before it’s had the chance to become the recognized default [legitimacy].  I don’t mean to downplay things like this, I just think they’re more tractable than the equivalent problems in pretty much any other scheme.

Silicon Valley Liberalism

thathopeyetlives:

balioc:

cptsdcarlosdevil:

A while ago, I stumbled across the following study of the political opinions of tech entrepreneurs, which found a distinctive pattern. Tech entrepreneurs tend to have liberal positions on social issues, globalism, and redistribution, while having conservative opinions on regulation.

Specifically, according to the questionnaire, tech entrepreneurs believe the following:

Globalism

• We should not pay…

View On WordPress

Taking this at face value, it is possible that my own politics could be fairly described as “Silicon Valley monarchism.”

What does that mean?

It’s always dangerous to delve into object-level politics casually, but in a very very basic and surface-level sense:

Freedom of speech, and other basic liberties, are very important.  Universal distribution of wealth is very important.  Avoiding wars and other destructive factional conflicts is very important.  Having government that will act as though all individuals possess moral salience is very important.  Capable technocratic management is very important.

All these things are so important, in fact, that they should be defended by a Leviathan of unparalleled power and unlimited domain.  The vagaries of public opinion cannot be relied upon to do the job, and neither can any entity that must struggle continually to maintain control. 

balioc:

There is not a conflict between “it’s OK to be angry” and “it’s not OK to lose control and explode at other people in anger.” 

Anger is a feeling.  It exists inside your mind.  Like other things that exist inside your mind, it can be expressed, and we have a suite of basic general-purpose rules for doing that in an acceptably civilized way.  Use your words.  Be courteous.  Give others their due.  Y’know, basic stuff like that.

I am breathtakingly angry, like, all the time.  And this is not a secret from the people around me!  They are keenly aware of it!  I publicize the fact frequently and with vigor!  And this is not particularly a problem, because I do not do the sort of intemperate things that people do right before they complain about how they’re “not allowed to be angry.” 

---

Self-control isn’t always easy, and it’s harder for some than for others across the board, and I understand that.  I sympathize with people who fail at it.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not important.

…and now that I’m somewhat less angry myself, I think I need to walk this back a bit.  My original framing may incorporate a soupcon of Just World Fallacy.  Which certainly isn’t what I intended to convey, but – intentions get you only so far. 

The world is not just.  That’s as true when it comes to anger, and expressions of anger, as it is with regard to anything else.  In some circumstances you can act like the meanest, crudest three-year-old throwing a tantrum, and it’ll work out great for you.  (Maybe you’ll become President!)  In other circumstances, even if your comportment is unimpeachably civilized and courteous and reasonable, you can be slammed for your “inappropriate anger” (or some such) and made to suffer for it – because some martinet feels that disagreement is the same as disrespect, because someone thinks that acting hypersensitive is a good way to make a power play, because any of a million things.  That happens.  Good conduct is not a royal road to fair treatment, let alone to unbridled social success.

I mean, it helps.  On average.  All things being equal.  Often it helps a lot.

And yet.

My claim is a normative claim, not a positive one.  It is OK to be angry, but your anger does not justify behavior that would otherwise be rude or cruel.   This is true no matter how well, or how badly, the rest of the world comports itself in accordance with this ideal.  And sometimes the rest of the world will be really shitty indeed.

I do not mean to make mock of anyone’s difficulties.

There is not a conflict between “it’s OK to be angry” and “it’s not OK to lose control and explode at other people in anger.” 

Anger is a feeling.  It exists inside your mind.  Like other things that exist inside your mind, it can be expressed, and we have a suite of basic general-purpose rules for doing that in an acceptably civilized way.  Use your words.  Be courteous.  Give others their due.  Y’know, basic stuff like that.

I am breathtakingly angry, like, all the time.  And this is not a secret from the people around me!  They are keenly aware of it!  I publicize the fact frequently and with vigor!  And this is not particularly a problem, because I do not do the sort of intemperate things that people do right before they complain about how they’re “not allowed to be angry.” 

Self-control isn’t always easy, and it’s harder for some than for others across the board, and I understand that.  I sympathize with people who fail at it.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not important.

thathopeyetlives:

I think the workweek probably should be shortened and that a 35 or even 30 hour workweek should probably be considered full time, but I extremely doubt the claims that wage/salary workers are doing useful work for only the minimal period of time that certain communists claim.

There’s a tremendous range, is the thing.  There are a lot of wage workers who have task-critical jobs that require constant input of effort.  There are also a lot of wage workers who could disappear for weeks or months on end without anyone actually noticing the effect on any product or process.  I have yet to find any two people who have very similar estimates of the ratio between these two populations.

Silicon Valley Liberalism

cptsdcarlosdevil:

A while ago, I stumbled across the following study of the political opinions of tech entrepreneurs, which found a distinctive pattern. Tech entrepreneurs tend to have liberal positions on social issues, globalism, and redistribution, while having conservative opinions on regulation.

Specifically, according to the questionnaire, tech entrepreneurs believe the following:

Globalism

• We should not pay…

View On WordPress

Taking this at face value, it is possible that my own politics could be fairly described as “Silicon Valley monarchism.”

house-carpenter:

balioc:

I can’t believe that I’m the one who has to be saying this to Christian tradcons, but…

Yes, it’s true.  Once upon a time, especially in certain heavily-Catholic premodern societies, there were various high-prestige social roles for men that were associated with celibacy and virginity.  Maybe that was a good thing, maybe not; that’s an argument for another time. 

But even if that social technology were in widespread use, and even if in fact it proved to be immensely beneficial overall, it would not do anything to help most of the current crop of sad lonely men who are bemoaning their lack of romantic/sexual success. 

Western culture has never particularly celebrated celibacy or virginity in men, on their own merits.  Quite the reverse, mostly.  It has, in some times and places, celebrated priesthood and monasticism, which incorporate celibacy as part of the package.  But being lonely and sad and bitter is not a qualification for holy orders.  If you claim to take this seriously, then you should understand that a priest is supposed to have a calling – and even if you don’t really take it seriously, even if you’re treating it as culture-engineering mumbo jumbo, you should understand that ordination is only going to be helpful for someone who actually wants the role and the duties of a priest.  It’s not a functional consolation prize.   

---

That said, “come up with a viable consolation prize for lonely sad sexually-unsuccessful men that can be implemented at scale” is certainly an interesting culture-engineering challenge.

The best I can come up with, on very short notice, is something like George R.R. Martin’s Night’s Watch.  “We all understand that you’re unwanted bottom-of-the-barrel human slime.  We’re going to send you off to live in a mostly-isolated community with similarly-situated guys, so that you can form your own social structures without being constantly reminded of your failures, like Australia or something…but instead of just cutting you loose, we’ll have you doing something useful that can engender pride, and we’ll provide you with enough small luxuries and prostitutes to make the social privation seem a bit less awful.”

I’m pretty sure we could actually do a lot better than that, though.

I think the proposed solution sounds alright, if you don’t, like, actually phrase it as “we all understand that you’re unwanted bottom-of-the-barrel human slime”.

I also think the idea with the stuff about priesthood and monasticism is that if those were more valued, visible options in our society then people would be less inclined to spiral into bitterness etc. as a result of lack of sexual/romantic success as there’d be a high-status escape route visible. Like, you wouldn’t have sad, lonely, bitter men flooding into the priesthood. You’d have men who would otherwise have been sad, lonely and bitter going into the priesthood, but in this counterfactual they would stay psychologically healthy.

If you create a new high-status role, it’s not just going to be an attractor for men who would otherwise be sad and lonely and bitter, it’s also going to be an attractor for much-more-functional people who want that particular form of status.  And they will mostly outcompete the problem children, because the problem children are bad at things and lose competitions, which is kind of the thing that got us started here.

(Yeah, those functional people often won’t be thrilled about the celibacy, but…functional people also aren’t thrilled about all the sacrifices you have to make to go into academia or show biz or whatever, and yet they do it anyway, in vast numbers.)

It’s really, really, really hard to ensure that you have a respectable niche for absolutely everyone.  People invade each other’s niches all the time.  And whatever system you set up, unless you’re way better at social engineering than anyone has ever been in the history of humanity,  you are going to end up with a leftover class of people that has failed at everything and is really bitter about it.

SIDEBAR:

I realize, as I write this, that I am conflating two concepts which are related and overlapping but not identical.  Success-in-love is not actually the same as success-in-general.  There are in fact some people who are extremely smart and functional and hardworking who nonetheless can’t find a willing partner, and maybe those people could do well in a respected celibate priesthood, if being a cleric entailed the right sorts of work. 

But in fact all good things are correlated.  A great many of the people who can’t find love also can’t hold down a decent job, can’t pass classes, can’t win anyone’s respect, etc.  All these problems reinforce each other. 

The explicit “we are calling you human slime” thing wasn’t an accident.  It’s an attempt to signal something like: This is not just another competition that you’re going to lose because you’re a loser.  Here, you will not have to compete against people who are going to crush you; this is not for them, and they will be kept away.   Here, you will not have to pretend that you started off as something other than what you are.  We will accept you, and make something useful out of you, no matter how worthless and terrible you are.

brazenautomaton:

balioc:

brazenautomaton:

joons:

joons:

one thing that i see a lot is that critics can’t seem to distinguish between ironic imagery in the dceu and its actual, textual themes.

when we get a series of pundits talking about the superman as a god, The Superman as an identity-less force of nature, accompanied by shots of The Superman ascending from heaven … none of that is superman’s true nature. none of it. we know it isn’t because the montage ends with clark in casual clothes staring at the television, chewing on his lip with a mix of trepidation and anger. 

this normal guy who’s just trying his best is sitting in his girlfriend’s apartment while the world talks about him like he’s a vindictive, uncontainable spirit. they’ve built statues to him. they want him to do everything–and nothing. they say, “we don’t know him. but we’re fitting him into an image we understand.” 

and critics don’t get that those accompanying images of clark lensflared and glowing are mere fantasy. The Superman appears defiant and unreachable and all-powerful, but the clark we see and know, the clark we follow when we’re in his POV, is sitting on his girlfriend’s couch, wondering what to do, wondering what people see when they look at him.

to come away from that scene and think, “the film is trying to portray clark as a god” is missing the really obvious point that the film knows clark is so much more than that, that he’s uncomfortable with even the suggestion of being held up as something perfect or unreachable. he hates it. the crucial flaw of every character in the film is their inability to see him as ordinary. lois lane’s ability to see him that way allows her to discover evidence of luthor’s plot and to force batman to rethink his assumptions. luthor and bruce cannot predict clark’s behavior because they don’t think he will react in a human, emotional way. everything about the way the story unfolds tells us that clark is happily earthbound, that all attempts to frame him as divine are inherently flawed and even dangerous. 

even the allegorical moment of his sacrifice, which is played straight, is about the divine made human. his mistakes, his sacrifices, his values become our myth, but he is human and flawed and grounded. this is an unmistakable beat that the movies consistently explore. and critics can’t seem to tell that the movie is presenting that view of superman as a flaw, primarily, i think, because they are so used to superhero films being so literal about everything that they can’t even recognize metaphors and ironic imagery when they appear. 

and that’s their failure, not the film’s. and certainly not superman’s.

#i feel like the negative response is due to people’s unwillingness to see and explore the deeper meaning and themes of the movie #just because that’s not what they expect out of a film about superheroes #which is two hours of entertainment with cool action and funny scenes #but a philosophical superhero movie based on characterization and literary themes #that doesn’t even follow the blockbuster formula #and asks the viewers to look below the surface and think instead of taking everything literally #it seems such a movie is unacceptable for many #but it exists #and i’m so happy it does #also can we talk about the depiction of superman/clark as an introverted person who doesn’t talk too much #obviously both in bvs and mos #which is so great because you barely see a leading character or a superhero like that #and it makes so much sense in the context of the film #because the intentions and actions of introverts are more likely to be misunderstood #and they don’t really talk about how they feel #which is something people wanted him to do bc apparently it wasn’t clear #which is confusing to me bc even extroverted characters shouldn’t have to to that and rely on dialogue #to be understood #that’s not how films work sorry (via @clarandthecloud)

so the movie constantly compares him to Christ and has him die in a Christlike manner, but it doesn’t count because of reasons?

When you have a Christ figure die because he is pierced by a lance, the message is not REALLY about how we’re the ones who are wrong for thinking the movie is casting him as Christlike.

even the allegorical moment of his sacrifice, which is played straight, is about the divine made human.

Like, e.g., Christ, who was notable for being that exact thing.

I think it’s hard to spin the OP as saying that Superman-in-that-moment is not legitimately Christlike. 

The thesis of the OP is “the movie is not portraying Clark as a god, but saying we are wrong to think it is.”

The movie has Batman make his anti-alien weapon in the shape of a fucking lance for literally no reason other than that Christ was killed when pierced by a lance.

That doesn’t happen in a movie whose message is “Stop comparing this character to Christ!”

OK, I’ll admit that it’s silly to try to speak for the OP, and this is a pointless game of internet exegesis. 

But…Christ is not “a god,” Christ is God made man, Christ is all the power and glory of divinity inextricably interwoven with the frailties and fears of mortals.  That is kind of the entire point.  Someone who is saying “this movie depicts Superman as having feelings and an essential humanity as well as his absurd power-suite” is not saying “Superman is not like Christ,” it is saying “Superman is like Christ.” 

And the post says explicitly that “the allegorical moment of his sacrifice” is “played straight.” 

Your point, which is mostly accurate, is entirely compatible with the OP.  “Superman is Christ” != “Superman is an implacable inhuman spirit.” 

[This is just about translation.  I think the object-level claims are a bit garbled, largely because the movie’s symbolism is a bit garbled; it kind of oscillates on what role Superman is supposed to occupy in the world.]

brazenautomaton:

joons:

joons:

one thing that i see a lot is that critics can’t seem to distinguish between ironic imagery in the dceu and its actual, textual themes.

when we get a series of pundits talking about the superman as a god, The Superman as an identity-less force of nature, accompanied by shots of The Superman ascending from heaven … none of that is superman’s true nature. none of it. we know it isn’t because the montage ends with clark in casual clothes staring at the television, chewing on his lip with a mix of trepidation and anger. 

this normal guy who’s just trying his best is sitting in his girlfriend’s apartment while the world talks about him like he’s a vindictive, uncontainable spirit. they’ve built statues to him. they want him to do everything–and nothing. they say, “we don’t know him. but we’re fitting him into an image we understand.” 

and critics don’t get that those accompanying images of clark lensflared and glowing are mere fantasy. The Superman appears defiant and unreachable and all-powerful, but the clark we see and know, the clark we follow when we’re in his POV, is sitting on his girlfriend’s couch, wondering what to do, wondering what people see when they look at him.

to come away from that scene and think, “the film is trying to portray clark as a god” is missing the really obvious point that the film knows clark is so much more than that, that he’s uncomfortable with even the suggestion of being held up as something perfect or unreachable. he hates it. the crucial flaw of every character in the film is their inability to see him as ordinary. lois lane’s ability to see him that way allows her to discover evidence of luthor’s plot and to force batman to rethink his assumptions. luthor and bruce cannot predict clark’s behavior because they don’t think he will react in a human, emotional way. everything about the way the story unfolds tells us that clark is happily earthbound, that all attempts to frame him as divine are inherently flawed and even dangerous. 

even the allegorical moment of his sacrifice, which is played straight, is about the divine made human. his mistakes, his sacrifices, his values become our myth, but he is human and flawed and grounded. this is an unmistakable beat that the movies consistently explore. and critics can’t seem to tell that the movie is presenting that view of superman as a flaw, primarily, i think, because they are so used to superhero films being so literal about everything that they can’t even recognize metaphors and ironic imagery when they appear. 

and that’s their failure, not the film’s. and certainly not superman’s.

#i feel like the negative response is due to people’s unwillingness to see and explore the deeper meaning and themes of the movie #just because that’s not what they expect out of a film about superheroes #which is two hours of entertainment with cool action and funny scenes #but a philosophical superhero movie based on characterization and literary themes #that doesn’t even follow the blockbuster formula #and asks the viewers to look below the surface and think instead of taking everything literally #it seems such a movie is unacceptable for many #but it exists #and i’m so happy it does #also can we talk about the depiction of superman/clark as an introverted person who doesn’t talk too much #obviously both in bvs and mos #which is so great because you barely see a leading character or a superhero like that #and it makes so much sense in the context of the film #because the intentions and actions of introverts are more likely to be misunderstood #and they don’t really talk about how they feel #which is something people wanted him to do bc apparently it wasn’t clear #which is confusing to me bc even extroverted characters shouldn’t have to to that and rely on dialogue #to be understood #that’s not how films work sorry (via @clarandthecloud)

so the movie constantly compares him to Christ and has him die in a Christlike manner, but it doesn’t count because of reasons?

When you have a Christ figure die because he is pierced by a lance, the message is not REALLY about how we’re the ones who are wrong for thinking the movie is casting him as Christlike.

even the allegorical moment of his sacrifice, which is played straight, is about the divine made human.

Like, e.g., Christ, who was notable for being that exact thing.

I think it’s hard to spin the OP as saying that Superman-in-that-moment is not legitimately Christlike. 

“Based on the knowledge available to me, within my own perspective and frame, I am quite confident that I understand you perfectly and that you don’t understand me at all.  I get to explain what is going on with you, but you don’t get to explain what is going on with me, because you have no clue.”

…strictly speaking, this kind of argument doesn’t have to be 100% bullshit.  Information asymmetries do exist. 

But it is almost certain to be 100% bullshit.  The much likelier case is that you know just as little about me as I know about you, that your ideas are founded in stereotype and speculation just as much as mine are. 

If someone is trying to push this kind of claim on you, he had better be prepared to display an extraordinary wealth of quality information, of a kind that has no parallel in the sphere of your own knowledge.

Otherwise you’re just getting bullied, or played, and you should react accordingly.

advocates and mediators

theunitofcaring:

So there are at least two important roles that need to be filled when an accusation of a serious wrongdoing comes out. 

Firstly, you need people who are capable both of being impartial and of seeming impartial, in order to create confidence that they’re looking into the issue with an absolute commitment to the truth. You need them to be able to avoid getting overwhelmed by the horrifying details of horrifying cases, to listen and pay attention and reason and notice discrepancies. This role is not incompatible with compassion and empathy for people who’ve been through awful things - in fact, it absolutely requires it, because you need to be able to create the conditions under which they feel comfortable sharing complicated stories with you. But it’s incompatible with a lot of ways that many people need compassion and empathy actually demonstrated.

So you also need people who will just see someone who needs it and commit themselves to being the strongest possible advocate for that person. This is formalized in our actual legal system, obviously, but it’s needed in communities too. This is what ‘I believe survivors’ is all about, of course - it’s not a claim that cases should be decided in favor of the person who first files a report, it’s saying ‘I’m taking the role where, if you tell me something awful happened to you, I will be your advocate’. This doesn’t require believing everything someone says, and can still involve a lot of investigation and fact-seeking, but it’s centered on being someone who they don’t regret telling their story. 

A community that is all advocates is going to have problems. Being an advocate doesn’t have to make it impossible to figure out the truth, and it’s completely possible to figure out the truth from a neutral position and then become an advocate, but I think it does substantially complicate truth-seeking. And advocates for different people are likely to end up yelling at each other, and this only gets resolved by who has more energy for yelling. And there’s no one to look to for a clear, honest picture of the situation.

But a community that is all mediators is also going to have a lot of problems. I’m seeing a bunch of them right now. People who were experiencing awful abuse confided, tentatively, in others. They said ‘I think he’s mistreating me’. They met people who had seen the failure modes of all-advocate communities, and thought it was just morally right to be a mediator. Those people said ‘hmm, I can really see both sides of this’ or ‘why does it feel like that to you?’. What they needed to hear was ‘well, fuck. do you have a place to go? what can I do to help you get out?’

I think the failure modes of all-advocates situations tend to be really visible. You get giant yelling matches where no one external to the situation can even guess what’s really going on, and where no one ever changes their mind. The failure modes of a community full of mediators are much quieter. They’re people - people in need - saying, quietly, ‘this doesn’t seem right’, and hearing ‘I really see both of your perspectives here’ and not saying anything again.

This formulation conflates two things that are very importantly different.  In particular, while it’s always kind of rude to quibble with someone’s terminology while he’s trying to make a substantive point, the use of “advocate” here is really doing a lot to muddy the waters.

If someone comes out and says I’m hurting, I’m in a bad situation, something is very wrong –

– then, yes, you definitely want to have some people around whose immediate response to that is what can we do to help?  You want people saying the fact that you’re hurting means that there is a real and serious problem, and we are going to take care of you.  You want people saying I see your pain, it’s real, it’s valid, you matter. (And I say this last thing as someone who firmly believes that validation is a chump’s game and that emotional self-sufficiency is critical, but Christ, in-the-middle-of-a-fucking-trauma-episode is not the time to start pushing someone down hard roads towards his best self.)  A person in pain may well need to hear those things.  A person in pain may well need those offers of care. 

And, indeed, you really do not want every single person to respond with are you sure you’re being fair? or what have you done to fix the problem on your end? or let’s pick this situation apart.  As you say, that tends to shut down the people who are hurting, which gets you nothing except more hurting. 

And if that’s what you mean by “advocate,” then sure, bring on the advocates. 

But.

If someone comes out and says this person hurt me, he’s a bad guy, something needs to be done –

– then you really do not want to have a cadre of people around who think it’s their job to say yes, we agree with you automatically because you are in pain, we will take up the cause of Doing Something About the Bad Guy. 

The obvious reason is, well, “this just tells unscrupulous people that they can automatically start witch hunts against their enemies by shedding crocodile tears.”  The somewhat-less-obvious-but-much-more-important reason is “often, people are in genuine pain, but they assign blame for it in a way that is not accurate or fair.”  It’s very natural to want there to be a Bad Guy, especially if someone has in fact been causing you pain somehow.  It’s common to feel an inchoate yearning for closure-via-moral-victory.  None of which means that there is actually someone who deserves punishment or censure.  And if you demand that the deck start stacked when it comes to figuring out whether you actually have a Bad Guy, well, you’ll get the results that you should expect from playing with a stacked deck.

Most of the useful things that you can do for someone in need do not involve “advocacy” in any normal sense of the term.  And there should be a much, much higher threshold of confidence required for “I will be an advocate against someone” than for “I will take care of someone in need.” 

Maybe I’m reading too much into this.  Maybe I’m jumping at rhetorical phantoms that aren’t really there.  But this seems worth saying, in case anyone else is seeing the same things that I am.

I realize that this is not the most opportune time to be making this argument.

I’m not even slightly involved – I don’t know any of the relevant people, even as an internet presence – but I am in fact aware that the OP was inspired by a recent incident, and that “maybe we should be very worried about being too quick to start witch hunts” is…not the thought at the top of anyone’s mind right now. 

But, well… 

When unwise overbroad norms get embedded in the culture or the policy mechanism, it’s likely to happen precisely at moments like this, when it seems so clear that something must be done.  The crises pass, the norms remain.  And there’s a lot of long-term harm to be done in shading the line between “we should be solicitous of people who are hurting” and “[certain] people should be encouraged to believe accusations without evaluating them.” 

“NPC” does not mean “person who doesn’t matter” or “person with no meaningful traits.”  In worlds that have NPCs, most of the most interesting and important people in the world are NPCs.

Anyone who actually pays attention to RPGs of any sort – tabletop, vidya, whatever – understands this perfectly well.

People really like conflating “this is morally good” with “this will make you strong.” 

It’s not a surprise.  If someone is in favor of a thing, he will try to give you incentives to do it.  He will try to tell you that it will help you accomplish your other goals.  No one wants to be in the position of saying “my purposes are righteous, so you should make sacrifices in order to help me accomplish them.”

But, most of the time, that is actually what’s being asked of you.

And maybe those purposes really are righteous; some purposes are.  Maybe you really ought to be making sacrifices for them.  In the final analysis, the universe was not designed to offer us a perfect virtuous spiral, most truly worthwhile-in-their-own-right things are (at best) orthogonal to success vectors, and there are constant complicated tradeoffs between cultivating strength and spending strength to do good.

Don’t be fooled.  Don’t let yourself drift into the fantasy where there are no tradeoffs of this kind.  Don’t let anyone sell you a pipe dream.  Always consider how the proposed course of action will influence your future capabilities, and how positive its effects will be on their own merit. 

This particular vagueblog isn’t in reference to any discourse I’ve seen recently.  It’s just…groping at something that deserves a much more substantive treatment.

This doth plague my heart most grievously.

Brothers, recite Deus Pax et Aeon.

One very important thing about the worthy God-Emperor of Mankind is that he does not seek legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects.

I mean, sure, he’ll get it, a lot of the time.  There are always many humans who will worship power, whatever form it may take in their generation.  And if – as we are positing – he is in fact a worthy monarch, if his decisions are just and noble decisions that advance the welfare of humanity, then a host of people will work very hard to find abstract ideals that justify the fact of his rule.

But actually trying to cultivate legitimacy, trying to weigh upon people’s minds and souls in order to convince them that they ought to obey you as a matter of moral right, is in itself an act of power-hoarding.  It is a sacrifice of good government for continued government, a move in the direction of ruling wrongly so that you may be allowed to continue to rule at all.  And thus it belongs to petty tyrants. 

Leviathan says simply obey, or face the consequences, and allows your intellect to process the cosmic meaning of that dictum as it sees fit.  Leviathan does not care whether you despise him, so long as you do not hinder the flourishing of mankind. 

Mencius Moldbug – of all people! – actually grasped this particular point, sort of, with his depiction of the gold-obsessed alien overlord Fnargl.  It’s a shame that he lost hold of the idea in basically everything else he had to say about government.

“… it is our wealth and material prosperity and government welfare expenditures that make us much less dependent on neighbors or community.”

This is, according to the rhetoric of the text, a bad thing.

Some people. 

prudencepaccard:

thinking about how Jean-Pierre Melville described himself as an “anarcho-feudalist” and reminded of that @raggedjackscarlet post about how all a film noir protag does is “motor between different castles” but I can’t find it

Not RJS.

http://secondbalcony.tumblr.com/post/138338791853/there-is-a-secret-genre-whose-defining-trope-is

funereal-disease:

neurodiversitysci:

fierceawakening:

genderfight:

dagny-hashtaggart:

voidbattlemage:

weedle-testaburger:

thescotchinthenorth:

arthicat:

elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:

breaking bad, fight club, rick and morty, clockwork orange, and the catcher in the rye are all arguably good things - but if a man says they are his FAVORITE book/movie/tv show? RUN.

Can someone explain this to me?

They’re all works that are examinations of compelling but deeply flawed (usually narcissistic and violent) men. People rightly like all these works because they are good, but the implication of the original post is that if a guy says they are his favorite work, he is probably misunderstanding the point of the work and instead idolizing the male protagonist and is unable to recognize their flaws.

Basically, ask why they like it. If they like it because they think it’s well-written and made, you’re probably good. But if they want to be like Walter White, or Tyler Durden, or Rick Sanchez, or Alex DeLarge, or Holden Caulfield: yeah, RUN.

Finally I can reblog this post.

I always find Catcher In The Rye and Holden Caulfield to be odd members of this list. Walter White, Tyler Durden, Rick Sanchez, and Alex DeLarge are all literal murderers, as well as variously rapists, cult leaders, pushers of hard drugs, and so on. Holden Caulfield is a depressed teenager who at his worst throws a punch at a peer and fantasizes about killing a pimp who just beat him up. He’s a bit of a disaster, and I can see why admiring him could indicate childishness, but he still seems very different from the others on this list, who are at best Byronic and at worst intensely evil.

(Also, yeah, what weedle-testaburger said. There are better and worse reasons for liking each of these works.)

I think the common thread that runs through all of these that catches Holden is actually the reason why I am skeptical of men who list these as media favorites: they are all, to some extent, misunderstood outcast genius figures who are smarter than their society.

I’ve watched a lot of bad movies, but a favorite subgenre of bad film is the Misunderstood Outcast Genius Vindication Fantasy. To name two recent cases, The Book of Henry and Bickford Schmeckler’s Cool Ideas. There is a fantasy that men have, about men who might be assholes but goshdarn they are right. Their failure to obey society’s rules bespeaks not social failure but an inability or unwillingness to play a rigged game designed for lesser players. They have novel social theories, and surprisingly often will have a totalizing Theory of Everything that explains the whole world to them in a single pithy phrase. And that phrase will usually be something edgy, unexpected, and a little antisocial. It’s always “Nothing can ever be truly, fully understood. Not even the most simple idea. Not even this” (to lift Bickford’s) and never “only geology and kindness move mountains.”

Every protagonist on OP’s list, to a man, participates in that fantasy. In fact, unless we’re just talking about men who idolize murderers because they’re murderers, I suspect that the Outcast Genius thing is probably the shared attraction.

…there is a person I kind of want to tag here, but I really don’t want to drag her in to read “see, your love for Holden Caulfield because you are obviously mentally ill too proves you are bad.”

Feminist critics always seem to overlook that the misunderstood, socially awkward genius trope nicely fits the experiences of a lot of neurodivergent people. It allows them to see themselves as human beings who can contribute to the world even when everyone around them keeps trying to convince them of their worthlessness.

While I don’t identify with any of the above characters, I *do* identify with that trope. Moreover, there are female characters who fit under it as well, many of whom Tumblr likes: Belle and Anne Shirley, to name two. Men do not have a monopoly on being socially awkward, misunderstood, rebellious creative geniuses.

In fact, I think misogyny only creeps in when men who feel misunderstood believe women don’t go through the same thing and can’t identify with the same trope. Those are the guys I would avoid.

THIS. “Having a power fantasy means you’re already powerful and probably want to hurt people” is just…such a bafflingly backwards take.

Sigh.  I actually don’t think this take is sufficiently cynical.  I don’t think the real underlying objection to “the nerdy dude likes his Misunderstood Outcast Genius Vindication Fantasy” is “the nerdy dude actually has power and his aesthetic taste demonstrates his willingness to abuse it,” although that’s often the proffered justification.

It’s something more like…”the nerdy dude is learning to be happy with his status as an outcast, to take some pride in the creature that he already is, and therefore attempts to shame him into being something else are less likely to get traction.” 

I do not have a lot of patience for shame-based social engineering projects.

So, gentlemen, this is the challenge:

What we want is to give more money to a wider variety of people, with fewer strings attached, so that they can use it to suffer less and flourish more. 

(I realize that this is not actually what everyone wants.  But, for purposes of this discussion, we are presuming that it is in fact a goal.)

You may justify this goal, internally or within your own little discursive circle, with an appeal to universalist compassion.  There is no deserving or undeserving, there is only weal and woe.  And that’s fine.  But – I would posit – politically speaking that will not fly, not anytime in the foreseeable future.  I don’t care how airtight your philosophy is, how sincere and noble your emotions are.  You will not be able to sell most of the relevant people on universalist compassion.  The cultural defenses against malefic actors are powerful and deeply embedded.  The fear of being made a sucker runs deep, and there are actually good reasons for that.  You will not be able to get people to stop worrying about the prospect of throwing endless resources into a black hole.  “Deserving” and “undeserving” are not going away.

But they don’t have to mean exactly what they mean right now.  “Deserving” certainly doesn’t have to map to “employed, in a standard full-time Late-Capitalism-comprehensible kind of way.” 

For example, one readily-available alternative is @mitigatedchaos‘s notion of nationalism, where “deserving” maps to something like “a member of my particular sovereign cultural polity.”  I don’t think that this is a good alternative for all sorts of reasons, but I think we’ve seen ample evidence that it can work at scale.

So – what are other good alternatives?  How can we redefine our alleged values, such that it’ll be easier to spread the wealth around, while still having values such that the masses won’t recoil from the prospect? 

@bambamramfan @theunitofcaring

kontextmaschine:

alexanderrm:

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

Hey yo real question: who do poor Israeli Jews identify as the secret power behind an economic conspiracy keeping them down?

Or is settler colonialism the valve that makes sure you never get there so it’s always externalized?

(‘Merica!)

I’m sure somewhere in a world of 14-17 million Jews there’s a poor Jewish person who believes there’s an international Jewish conspiracy, but only the elites get to be in on it.

For that matter, there have probably been cases where (for the very loose and non-deliberate definition of “Jewish conspiracy”) this was true- like if all the wealthy and middle-class Jews moved out of a Jewish neighborhood when poor nonjews started moving in, leaving the people too poor to move cut off from neighborhood networking opportunities, because they were based not on deliberate religious discrimination but just helping out the people you know.

Yeah based on the replies I might have framed it wrong, I’m not looking for like, the Jewish version of big overarching theories, but like who’s the poor Israeli version of “the guys who own the apartment building and always raise rent, own the corner store and only hire their cousins not us, who generally keep us down”, cause it can’t be “the Jews”. “The Russians”? “The Galicians”?

For non-Ashkenazi Jews it’s “the Ashkenazis,” but that’s obviously just kicking the can a little bit.

…I’ve never actually known any Jews to go for “we are kept down by the evil elite minority” thinking.  “We are kept down by the prejudices of the local majority” is much more popular, for obvious reasons. 

No real idea how this plays out in Israel, to address your actual question.  My best guess is “it doesn’t.”  That particular bit of ethnocultural myth isn’t universal, even if it’s popular.