Comment by kuramitropolis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kuramitropolis | Hacker News Reader

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>Modern HR selects primarily for desperation and compliance. Management is essentially an activity of self-preservation. Qualities like duty, loyalty, initiative and industriousness are deemed weaknesses.

This is true for the white collar world - the entire point of which is to put restraints on the actual skilled workers, so they don't start changing the world quicker than psychopaths can adapt. Otherwise the idiots will just drop off the gene pool, and then who's gonna start our wars for us, eh?

>How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire culture?

You ask this rhetorically, as if it's some sort of intractable question, but the 20th century is full of examples of the West "rebooting" the cultures and economies of non-aligned states, and it sure ain't pretty. Takes about a generation of chaotic violent struggle, give or take. Then, a new local optimum emerges as power inevitably consolidates into the same externality-blind primate hierarchy, "but different".

> You ask this rhetorically, as if it's some sort of intractable question

Sorry if it came over that way. I certainly didn't mean it to sound rhetorical. I'm all about actually changing things.

> 20th century is full of examples of the West "rebooting" the cultures and economies of non-aligned states

And Britain long, long before that. All have been failures, since all were looting presented as benvolent reform and aid. People help themselves, which can generally happen only once the boot is romoved from their faces. So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :)

Maybe de-booting is what we're after?

One cannot impose a culture. But there's no reason it need take "a generation of chaotic violent struggle". That seems a little pessimistic. Historically, "blind primate hierarchies" [1] have civilised themselves rapidly under the right conditions. It would be nice to think we could reason our way into a better place before it comes to the point W. James's "Moral Equivalent of War", as climate change, inevitably brings us to our senses.

[1] Do you think of Western culture as a blind primate hierarchy? Is not that very perspective part of the problem?

>Do you think of Western culture as a blind primate hierarchy?

Honestly? I used to think of it as an edifice of enlightened human thought... HAHAHAHAHA.

>Is not that very perspective part of the problem?

Don't think so. I'm not even sure there is a problem.

>I'm all about actually changing things

Oh, I wish things were different, too. But IMHO all I can possibly ever change are my local circumstances, and even that is not always particularly tractable. Intentionally "changing the world for the better" kinda sounds like a single cell of your body arbitrarily changing the laws of physics under which it operates. (Stretch that metaphor a bit and you get cancerous ideologies. We saw how well that worked...)

The world can evolve, though. Over feedback loops that take generations.

>So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :) Maybe de-booting is what we're after?

Now that's some pretty cool wordplay - the world needs more of that, so you made a positive change right there :) The Butlerian debooting :D

Tiny changes with a smile. Now there are two of us. :) Pass it on.

> I'm all about actually changing things.

Me too.

Where I am from there is a lot of bullying. All the way.. from small kids and up to the political representatives.

What I am doing (and I do not recommend this btw) is to exit every norm, so I do everything superficial poorly. I never edit anything I write, I just post the first draft, I don't cut my hair, I don't wear shoes, my clothes I've just found, I can't remember when I last bought clothes, I don't own a phone, I don't use any social media. Basically I set myself up for being bullied.

However! I also work on the most important problem; the idea being that the absurdity may wake people up to the idea that maybe it's better to help me (by editing things or contributing things) than it is to bully me when what they are doing is nonsense and what I am doing is necessary... The point is that if you cannot use violence then you've got to use humor and poke fun at the holes in the opponents argument.

I look up to you.

Are you a hermit?

People who care about you, care about you.

The rest is trapping(s).

I thought our individualistic culture was based on the shared understanding that, the more value you provide to others' lives, the more your nonconformities are accepted.

Aint much you can do for your fellows when your hands are in handcuffs though, golden or otherwise, so we better keep up with 'em Joneses and don't dare imagine freedom, or else.

I'm not quite sure how to parse this or if this was even meant for me, but I do hope that this isn't some pretense to dispair or annihilation (the bad kind)

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but I'm basically responsding to the implications I perceived in the "are you a hermit" question, which I feel are quite disheartening in their own right: that meeting society on one's own terms is impossible without imposing on oneself the near-total isolation usually associated with hermitdom.

In another recent comment thread, the refusal to use the conveniences of Big Tech was compared to "self-flagellation" - another quaint association with the atrocities of Western religion - while the fact remains that entrusting contemporary connected technology with stewardship over one's social life is the actual self-harmful approach.

Yes I'm starting to understand a little more and I agree with you in broad strokes. But I guess to parley with 'society' requires some degree of compromise. Casting your own ego into the mix might be self correcting on societies part (maybe not formally); if you impose yourself without effacing anything, like a hapless lover in a one-sided relationship, you stand to lose all of it, if you're pushing and pulling without giving. That's how I see it, as a matter of practicality.

However the more nuanced point, something maybe deeper, about society, reminds me of Weil's 'Great Beast'. In a way I'm offering a redemptive hermitdom, and that's why I thought your response was hard to parse (blame me, because my question could either be seen as childishly naive or a handshake from one acolyte to another).

My conception of hermitdom isn't cursed or evil or self-destructive necessarily, and I was poking at the parent commentor a little to see if they might think the same way. Weil is probably hitting at the core of the issue with more resolution that I could ever hope to achieve:

> Relationship breaks its way out of the social. It is the monopoly of the individual. Society is the cave. The way out is solitude. ... To relate belongs to the solitary spirit. No crowd can conceive relationship: "This is good or bad in relation to..." "in so far as ..." That escapes the crowd. A crowd cannot add things together. One who is above social life returns to it when he wishes; not so one who is below. It is the same with everything.

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