I don’t care for his beliefs at all but that is not what my petty protest is about.
He is an incarnation in the flesh of state corporatism and a anti-democracy activist. That I can not stomach
784 karma · joined August 10, 2021
He is an incarnation in the flesh of state corporatism and a anti-democracy activist. That I can not stomach
However, due to the high probability that blog-like content mentioning Girard shares Thiel’s ethos, I am obliged to pass on principal.
Anthropologists probably avoid analyzing the causality between culture and national success for the same reasons historians de-emphasize it. It’s an impossible dimension to tease out. Countries don’t exist in cultural silos untethered from history, geography, and foreign relations.
If anything the first is the flawed approach. The models that come out of it frequently fail to capture the complexity of reality. And that’s why so many data informed policy interventions fail.
And on the topic of applied social science. I don’t think attributing success to culture would even be useful because a culture in one place (or time) can be successful, but would be disastrous in other contexts.
On a personal level I would be distrustful of any attempts of the government to optimize culture. Culture is not the domain of Caesar.
There’s a theory that Hansel and Grettel represents a cultural memory of a time of famine where children were abandoned, left to starve.
When I have no stress (on rare occasions I’m able to detach from my problems), my desire to use my phone at all is non-existent. So I think you are right that’s it’s difficult to attribute causality when kids are constantly under stress.
This study, in fact, appears to only assess correlation. Haidt also strikes me as someone guided by a maverick worldview (he’s a serious thinker usually and I’ll read anything he writes)
So I don’t think it’s rational to transpose the historical benefits or flaws (if it’s even possible to disentangle the causal relationship between government structure and societal outcomes) into the political discourse and assume they would remain the same. One salient massive societal change has been the de-mystification of the aristocracy due to increased transparency. Instead of reverence, commoners view these people with contempt or even pity.
Speaking generally, I think way too much emphasis is being placed on the importance of government structure on outcomes. I understand why programmer types would be drawn to this analysis. But there are more salient dimensions: societal trust, peoples sense of stake in outcomes, the integrity of institutions, and material conditions.
I think an interesting part of 20th century American industrial/scientific history is that many of the prominent figures were European immigrants (many Jewish) or children of immigrants.
Maybe there is something exceptional about the environment itself. But the talented and privileged native citizens rarely aspire to be an innovator; they dream of being a leader or strategic thinker or mover of capital.
That’s why I think hard math is so marginalized even in elite circles (“I’ve never been good at math”). Technical work is essentially blue collar to the upper middle class. Many of my peers are in this group, and the only time they were ever interested in math or programming, was due to its possibility as a conduit to a more prestigious position.
This attitude is directly ingrained in undergrad institutions. They focus on general knowledge to serve as a justification to skip over front line work to become a leader (military officer, factory manager, investment banker).
There are excellent American technicians no doubt but most of them don’t fit the typical WASP mold or are predisposed to obsessing over systemic topics (which describes myself, being ADHD, although I can only strive to be excellent).
And the upper class? They have never aspired to much of anything really other than hedonism and protecting their position of status. At least in other countries, the upper class ideal is a renaissance man.
Edit: some of these assertions are sweeping and maybe a little mean. But I do think the thesis is directionally correct. America will need to change the culture around education to succeed in the 21st century. Immigration has and will continue to be a boon; but we have to accept the possibility that America could become a less desirable immigration target
I think you are touching on theory I have that Americans are becoming increasingly resentful that technical skills are becoming more necessary for middle class living. This is a huge driver of the pervading sense of precariousness. For some reason there’s a huge math phobia in this country
jk, thx for the info
I sympathize with the critique of democracy. However the failure of more authoritarian systems of governing is and always has been the lack of transparency and trust. In a democratic style of government there’s at least an attempt of oversight. Good luck making a FOIA request to a king or private corporation. Autocrats abuse this flaw to amass power and wealth for themselves at the expense of the population.
Democracy is also inextricably tied to civil liberties. Disenfranchised citizens have less recourse when their civil liberties are attacked
Edit responding to your edit: I 100% agree that any extreme is bad. A society with no restrictions would be anarchy (note mores and peer pressure are means of restriction). But in a democratic society, anti-democratic ideas must be resisted. Once the structures of power are changed, it’s almost impossible to reverse. Therefore, I believe it is imperative to call out these ideas for what they are.
Also I disagree that progressives fall in the same bucket as leftists. All leftists are authoritarian leaning but progressives can be liberal or authoritarian.
I don’t think it’s usefully either to endlessly categorize political movements. If you are partial to post-modern thought, you could say categorizing things is a way of exerting power of them. This has clearly been the runbook historically of dismantling the left in America. This is mostly self afflicted due to the tendency of the left to over intellectualize things, but there has been a conscious effort by provocateurs to infiltrate left wing groups and cause discord.
Being transgressive is definitely cool for disaffected trust fund kids who didn’t get into Deloitte, but I think there are darker undercurrents like you are implying.
The real irony in all of this is the post-modern and Marxist influences of the movement. Which is hilarious due to the Red Scare level of hysteria reactionaries have about those ideologies.
The philosophy of the cultural liberals is to remove restrictions that inhibit people from living the social lives they want.
The cultural socialists want to use the power of institutions to distribute a culture across the population. They believe their culture is societally optimal so reducing liberties to propagate it is morally justified.
I’m sure most peoples beliefs lie somewhere in between the two. But the cultural socialism maximalists in the west have been getting louder and louder and it’s beginning to terrify me.
I predict in the next 5 years, womens’ voting rights will be an actual political topic. It will start with “ironic” jokes and “rational” thinking but will get increasingly normalized in discourse.