Did you just write a constructive, reasonable, intelligent post on ILP?
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
I almost called the thread “unpleasant political beliefs”, but in a concession to conservatives (who I don’t really hate) I dropped the political tag because I know that not all of them are bigoted, deliberately insulting or wilfully ignorant, for example. At least, not the ones I know.
Another interesting thing that has emerged is that almost everyone, on either side of the debate, has interpreted what I said in terms of American politics, Republicans v. Democrats. Since I am not American this was clearly not what I had in mind when I wrote it. Interestingly, despite vastly different traditions, Toryism and Socialism seem to find close analogies in America, even if, for some bizarre reason, they call the latter liberalism (I think to most British people the word “liberal” means middle of the road lightweights and wannabes who will jettison any principles they claim to hold for the merest whiff of illusory power).
It’s funny how anti-semitism isn’t already included under racism, as if it’s its own special brand of ‘evil’.
I agree for the most part, I just don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
Rather, individuals and groups can choose to unite or divide.
At it’s core, the right wing is about descrimination and exclusion, what’s self and us becomes narrower and what’s other and them becomes wider. There are advantages and disadvantages to this process. The more one includes others in his definition of himself, the more one loses his sense of self. Seflishness is natural, we’re all selfish or we wouldn’t be here. I propose a hierarchy of selfishness where we are at the center, then our families, then our friends, then those closest to us genetically/memetically, our culture and race, then finally our species. I think selflessness is artificial, it’s something we do not for its own sake, but largely for our sake.
We gather into globalized cities because we want to live ‘the good life’, a life of self-indulgence, hedonism and materialism. But there’s consquences, as man increases artifice, he runs of the risk of being cheated by others, other who have no loyalty to him and like him, are largely in it for themselves. Hedonism and materialism, and artificial goods and services come at a price. man discriminates less, so even cripples, retards and defectives, even animals are eventually included in his definition of we, but this is only an insincere, partial inclusion.
All this can happen independent of politics, I see all this is somewhat independent of politics, because government can be used to maintain the status quo, or rally against it, and a tribe can maintain the status quo or disparage it with or without government. What people like maia are for then, is growth, humanization, they’re anti-nature, they want to humanize their environment, they want to live in an environment of more people and more things built by/for people, they want to tamper and mettle with everything, they’re idealistic about what man can accomplish, more pleasure, more material goods and services, more people, it’s always about more, increasing, never decreasing.
All of this of course will be man’s ultimate undoing, but that’s ok, civilization is cyclical, we’re in a process of integration but the pendulum will swing the other way in a century or two that is, if we’re still here.
With its ups and downs and inherent cycles, one thing is very, very clear in human history. We are becoming more integrated. Ultimately, there will be a world government. The beginnings of it are already there. It will be part of a process.
This is as unstoppable as any great trend, and it is by far the most obvious trend in history. Those who rail against it are on the losing side. Far better to try and work with it, and to ameliorate some of its possibly negative consequences.
They want to live in a clean, plastic, sanitized world, devoid of nature (nevermind what they say about preserving nature), they want to eliminate all traces of death and disease, that’s why they loathe religion and spirituality so much, because this is what used to give man comfort and help him deal with death, but now the thing is to eliminate death or at least give ourselves the illusion that death is being eliminated or that it doesn’t exist, which is why these types prize youth so much, and have a disdain for the elderly and the grotesque. They believe in contemporary science and the medical world, for all its many flaws, and they’re busy with life, they have lots of ‘friends’ on their facebook and they want to achieve, adapt, evolve and grow, they want to consume, and they can’t understand people who’re content with little and happy to stagnate, they say what’s with you, hey, you’re missing out, why are you so negative all the time, be positive! They like traveling and they want to see the world, they’re trendy, they want to stay up to date with the latest trends and gadgets, they talk about world peace and oneness, and how there are no differences between race and gender, and that all are deserving of love.
None of that is true in my experience.
I’d rather go outside all that in and do my own thing.
my consciousness is to discriminate (less is more).
in my view, your attitude is vain, hubris and dangerous.
It will happen anyway. Human history is the history of larger and more organised states and human rights being extendended from a tiny elite ever wider, along with wealth and prosperity our ancestors could never imagine.
Your insular view is certainly not uncommon, but it is swimming against the tide. Why not try and work with it, to influence how things will work out?
I agree, for the forseeable future, that’s where we’re headed, for better/worse.
I think there’ll always be little pockets of individualists and tribalists in and around the New World Order.
I don’t think you can influence the New World Order, but the New World Order can influence you. It feigns liberty and democracy, but it’s anything but.
You know we’ve been here before, there’s nothing new under the sun —>
Notice the hammer/sickle. Why no symbol of liberty, democracy, or capitalism, why no fasci, or swastik (communism killed more people than fascism or Nazism)? What the fuck is Europe without a Christian, white majority?
Once official poster of the EU (look familiar?).
The 10 Commandments of the Georgia Guidestones.
I can’t see those pictures.
Oh shit I can’t believe I forgot, sorry.
No probs.
And yet they both do the same things, as far as I can see.
And yet, working class people vote for right wing parties.
Well, you need to both constructively form rival gangs and encourage the rivalry between them in order for the strategy to work. Divide and conquer still involves building coalitions, but coalitions that are divided from other coalitions.
Like the two big parties in the US. Make one the party of abortion, the other the party of tax cuts. Both are gangs, apparently divided, ultimately conquering.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to here. If by our differences of worldview you mean that you believe in the state and I don’t, then OK, that does have a lot to do with why we disagree here.
I meant our openness to the idea of an intentional conspiracy. I would say that one gang conquers, and the other fails, and then another will bubble up and replace it. The strategy is not selected once as a strategy of oppression, but repeatedly as a strategy of competition. I read your post, particularly the divide and conquer bit, to mean a unitary enemy against the many, using this strategy to keep the many from rising up against it. I would describe things similarly but without the unitary enemy dividing to conquer. Instead, it is society dividing itself against itself, so that one part of it may conquer another. Perhaps I read too much into your words and misunderstood your point.
If you’re closed even to just the ‘idea’ of an intentional conspiracy then you’re a fool. Conspiracies happen all the time. Secrets are kept from the public on a daily basis. Companies lie about their profits on a daily basis.
What you ‘would say’ is irrelevant, only what actually happens. If what you were saying is true then there’d be another big party in the US by now. There isn’t. Why?
Because of an intentional conspiracy.
It is selected repeatedly as a strategy of oppression. There is no competition when both parties are owned by the same people. That’s like saying there’s competition between different brands of shoes who all use sweatshop labour - it makes no difference which one you choose, the result will be the same.
‘Society is dividing itself against itself’ makes no sense, grammatically, logically, historically, politically. It’s a meaningless explanation that I can’t even be bothered to dismantle. It’s just crap.
I never said anything about a unitary enemy, that is your simplification and presumption. Seriously, if you want to continue this discussion then you’re going to have to embrace some nuance and not use incredibly stupid phrases to cover up the gaps in your argument.
I said “our openness to the idea.” What in my post suggests that I’m “closed even to just the ‘idea’ of an intentional conspiracy”? You rail about nuance, but you read the concept of “openness” to have only two states: open and closed. Given that there is a crime of conspiracy, and that people are regularly prosecuted for it, is it really a good faith reading of a mention of differing openness to conclude that one person would deny even those readily verifiable conspiracies? For fuck sake, every explanation of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory. Give me some goddamned credit man.
You are more open than I am to conspiracies as an explanation for events. That does not mean that I will never appeal to conspiracy to explain anything.
Arguably there is. Although they’ve kept the same label, factions within both the Democratic and Republican party have seized power over the last 100 years. It’s happening in the modern Republican party: economic liberals are splitting from social conservatives, and trying to form a new coalition that draws moderate democrats. The composition and political positions espoused by the parties, and with them the controlling interests, change often. The parties themselves don’t because the structure of the US political system and first-past-the-post voting tend to make the success of a new party-in-name nearly impossible.
I mean to say that it is selected repeatedly by independent factions. I don’t think there are people who ‘own’ both parties. Nor do the parties enjoy complete dominance over society. Both parties favored SOPA, but companies and individuals were able to exert enough pressure to change that, even though traditional sources of money (particularly for the democrats) were strongly in favor of the bills. But it too involved othering, namely, ‘the government other means to take away your rights!’
Grammatically and logically, it certainly does. Society is an aggregate. The aggregate can attack itself, as a body attacks itself in an autoimmune disorder. Society is divided by internal forces.
Historically, this also seems right. We might be tempted to call the different parts of a divided society by different names, but it’s not necessary or even necessarily more correct to do so. When the US split into north and south, there was still a real society that spanned the two, and that society was divided against itself. The same can be said of the modern political US: It has divided itself against itself, though it is clearly still a coherent, aggregate whole.
Re the Banker’s Manifesto: I’m sure people have tried, but since the civil rights movement has happened since the manifesto was written, I’m going to venture to say that a lot people that the bankers didn’t want empowered got a lot more power. Also, they were wrong if only because much civil disobedience has come out of the recent loss of homes. People won’t risk a comfortable life, but when their life is in turmoil anyway, they aren’t risking very much by challenging power.
When talking about openness to an idea generally speaking there are only two states, open and closed. Being open to an idea doesn’t mean believing it, it means being willing to consider it. Many are simply not willing to consider the idea of intentional conspiracy.
Fine, you hereby are granted some credit by me.
Either you’re open to the possibility of conspiracies being the explanation for events or you’re not. You can’t half open a door. It isn’t a question of me being more open, I just follow where the evidence takes me. Despite the rather abrupt and dogmatic way with which I express my opinions, I have actually been through a lot of evidence and a lot of argument and counter-argument about that evidence before coming to the views I now hold.
So your argument against the two-party system being rigged is that we can see them merging together?
Look at their donors.
They enjoy complete dominance over who gets elected to important institutional positions. That’s not complete dominance, I don’t think any political system ever, anywhere, has had that. It’s an impossible standard, and a horrible one.
Then there is no such thing as ‘society’.
I don’t think it is. I think it is as fragmented as ever.
Look at how powerful people have responded to the threat from workers solidarity movements, suffrage and suffragette movements, civil rights movements, all of that. They’ve upped their game. Total control is a myth and there are fights we can win and have won, but we need to go beyond the demands of those movements precisely because the mechanisms of control have advanced since those movements achieved what they achieved. We can learn a lot from them about how organised, motivated people can do pretty much anything, but we have to recognise that the game has changed.
My front door is half open.