“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
"The purification of politics is an iridescent dream. Government is force. Politics is a battle for supremacy."
--Sen. John James Ingalls, R-KS (in office 1873-1891)
Maybe, eventually, more than ~1.5% of the populace will begin to believe in freedom and understand that true freedom means that someone I may not like is ALSO free - and might use that freedom for something I don't approve of - and we can quit fighting about it.
"But we are so much more evolved/developed nowadays, so now things are completely different due to [insert technology, law, treaty, similar of choice], so events XYZ can't happen again, especially since we all embrace [principles, -isms, creeds, other coherent school of thought]!"
Add to the above the following:
"Bit it's/wasn't >real< [communism, islam, christendom, capitalism, other], that's why it didn't work/doesn't work as the theory-dogma says it will!"
And:
"We have to believe in the [rights, privileges, prerogatives] of [table of commandments]!"
So far, the only way to avoid that triskelion of a tangled trap is to focus on concrete maters and facts, and let values and norms become evident only from what course of (in)action is suggested in any given matter. A hard sell, since belief in ideas utilises our emotional shortcuts while facts and empircisms uses conscious and thus slower thought.
Loved the text - you cut to the bone and to me that's the only way to write about such matters if what's written is to matter.
This post is more erudite than the description of your substack.
I have been thinking a lot about this too. What would a civil war these days look like? How would you know who to kill? Are we going to wear red or blue? What do you suppose will happen to the myriad entertainments if we embark on civil war? What are you going to eat while this war happens, since food in this country entirely depends on industrial processes running smoothly - the people you kill? What is left of civilization after cannibalism? Anyway, I think the idea of civil war is stupid, as are those who talk like it is a legitimate course of dealing with grievance.
That one is deceptively easy though: anyone individual or group of individuals actively trying to kill you or yours.
Problem of course being how many steps or separations from "man pointing a gun at you" you are willing and able to go - in principle, the chinese and the indians and all of Africa will spell the end of western civilisation simply by dint of numbers with no malice aforethought required - same way the brown rat replaced the black rat. Just the way of things, really. Doesn't mean they are trying to kill anyone.
And that right there is the Astroglide+WD40-lubed up slope.
But you're still "playing"- you're paying property taxes on that plot even if you're not using any services from the people extorting it, you're still subject to the laws of the surrounding entity governing what you can or cannot do on the property, etc.
We can opt not to participate, but we are all stuck playing. There is no terra incognita.
It's not intimidation, it's observation and prediction.
Read up on wars, especially civil wars. People who want to be left alone are often victimized by both sides. People who take a side are less likely to be victimized by one of the sides.
I'm not sure what water moving from gas to liquid has to do with this.
You remind me of survivalist/ 2A fanatics, who desperately need to believe all they require to escape what is coming is to invest in physical items they can store and look at.
If you are desperate to cope, then stop responding and I'll stop trying to wake you up to the hard reality that teams strongly tend to beat individuals, no matter how strong the individual. Again, read history. Almost no one gets to claim they are on "ghoul" to sit out civil unpleasantness or tyranny, and we are going to get 1 or both.
I think I see the problem. Did you possibly presume, based on my earlier comment, that I had some hyper pro individualist mindset?
I don’t. I was responding in the context of the author’s post, suggesting it was worthwhile to stay away from the currently dominant sides of the culture war (the so called red tribe or blue tribe).
Anyway. Trying to pull this train back on the tracks before we just start going ree.
PSA: I gave them a prorated refund for their subscription and canceled it.
I guess I need to state this: we do not speak to each other in this manner here. We do not tell each other to kill themselves and we do not call each other useless humans.
You could say it, sure. That's a bit of a blind. "Because it can be abused upu cannot have X", I have a knee-jerk objection to. Not sure that's rational or reasonable. Prejudice makes you stupid.
So:
Why cannot one have An Inexcusable Thing? Why must all judgment be binary: either suspended entirely or grossly erroneous? Who decides? Why? How? Can anyone reinvent the wheel or are we doomed?
You're perhaps inadverently making my point for me.
One can absolutely have an inexcusable thing. My question is, how far is one willing to go in pursuit of eradicating the inexcusable thing? I 100% agree with you that no one should involve children in any sort of sexual activity of any kind whatsoever, including showing them any sorts of pictures or anything else you could remotely put in this category.
Since we must kill pedos, should we be willing to even take a chance that my purely verbal accusation of you is true? Might it be better to just kill you, to make sure?
I saw this constantly working for CPS. The pursuit of various inexcusable things (including pedos) meant that mere accusations permanently destroyed the lives of transparently innocent people embroiled in custody disputes or nasty divorces.
The problem is that a sufficiently absolute- supremacist- position means that there need be no standard beyond "all or nothing." We do not need due process or a reasonable examination of how publicly harmful something is if we have decided its existence is intolerable, the argument goes. If you are trying to posit that I do not find this analogously useless with "nothing is forbidden," then you're putting words in my mouth.
In my lifetime, it was a common assumption that most gay men were pedophiles. Should every openly gay man be immediately investigated for possible acts of pedophilia, since it is inexcusable?
I have known many, many LGBT (of all the letters) people and don't have a religious tradition that condemns their conduct, preferences, or existence on its face. I would literally stake my life that of the 100 or so of these people I can recall knowing personally, not one was a pedophile and it would have been monstrous to treat them as such, or even as de facto suspect of such.
I do not want anyone waving their privates at children. I don't want children being around anyone's privates or pictures of privates outside of a biology class. I don't want children in any environment where adults are discussing, engaging in, or displaying sexual activity.
We can say "drag queen story hour is disgustingly inappropriate and should be illegal on some level" without saying "gay men lead to drag queen story hour, ipso facto."
This is the point the article attempts to make. There is a supremacist position that any tolerance of sexual minorities leads to the worst corruption of society and that it should all be considered a gateway to disgusting degradation, including pedophilia. There is another supremacist position that absolutely no sexual conduct should ever be forbidden- and furthermore, that critical examination of the societal impact of the existence of sexual minorities is in itself a forbidden question.
They have both risen to sufficient prominence that the vast majority of people find themselves being forced to choose between two absolute tribal affiliations, neither of which are wholly palatable to many, because the two supremacist viewpoints have allied together to completely eradicate the existence of a nuanced medium.
Not trying to put words in your mouth: I picked the pedo example because I figured it was safe to assume we were on the same page with it.
So yeah, how far do we get to go for what things, as you wrote. Embedded was (and I am probably mistaken - figuring my own thoughts out as the convo goes forward) the idea that nothing justifies the scorched earth approach.
Where I started, and for the reasons you gave.
What I am trying to get at is the continuum between nuking it from orbit and burning a firebreak. Or just putting up a fire extinguisher, and how we end up throwing it a party, and nuking the nukers.
And I just deleted the several paragraphs. This is not a convo we can have online. Sorry about that.
It is probably way too nuanced to have in the comments section of a substack, yes.
But I'm glad to know your thoughts on it are sufficiently nuanced and considered that such a channel is inadequate. That's enough for me to consider you of my tribe.
This is way better than any college course I ever took. Love your Civil War passage btw. Having been raised in a "Southern Aristocrat" family, but spending most of my adult life in the Boston area, has afforded me a unique perspective which has gone through several stages of evolution in my 75 years on this planet. I have always been "plagued" with the ability to see both sides of societal issues. In some ways that is a good trait, but in others, not so much. I can't count the number of times that I have been asked the question "who's side are you on anyway?"
That the consequences of reconstruction continue to drive economic, social, and racial divisions in the South is obvious to anyone with eyes to see and a basic textbook printed before 2000.
The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North (Richardson)
West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (Also Richardson)
She's generally good. She has written other histories but I don't own/haven't read them.
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (Foner)
Foner is really vocally progressive and annoyingly fixated on critical race theory and it shows up in his book. He's a NY Times darling, but this is still a good book because of its focus on how the Constitution evolved as a result of the period (very differently than the way it was headed).
"Think about what victory in ideological conflict looks like, what it would take in practical terms to execute it, once your vanquished foes lay helpless at your feet, and if this process is in itself worthwhile"
Ideological purge doesn't require a thought experiment as we saw plenty of this throughout the twentieth century (and before of course, but muh recencey bias or something). Unfortunately too many people are much more interested in their place in history than learning about or from it.
But seriously, it makes one wonder what an ideological purge circa 2022 would look like. It wouldn't be exactly the same as the totalitarian regimes of the mid-20th.
That's mainly the question I rhetorically raised- try to imagine Stalinist mass graves in the age of social media and Google Earth.
Nice opening Act I. I look forward to what follows.
The game, of civilized society, has had many rules penciled in over the millennia. The game, has always been one of survival, be it of ideas, things or peoples. The game, has no winning move. We all play a part, but none of us will see the final move, from this earth.
Too many people suffer from malignant boredom even if they seem quite busy. Most people don't do useful work. Making a lot of money as a glorified customer service rep doesn't bring a sense of tired fulfillment at the end of the day. Too many people go to college who don't belong there and need make-do jobs once they graduate.
Bring back trade high schools. We had those in NY in my younger days and smart kids with zero intellectual interests were prepared for extremely useful non-expiring skilled jobs.
Stop giving people stuff for free. No one values things they don't work for in one way or another.
Stop pathologizing everything and letting people use suspect diagnoses as leading identities.
Stop pretending "Their cult bad! My cult good!" Let people believe anything they want to but ensure they don't impose their beliefs on the governance of a civil society.
We need a full generational clear-out of nonsense. Get SEL out of every school program everywhere. Education isn't therapy, it's education and should prepare young people for practical life.
Ensure every middle-school curriculum includes basic budgeting and financial competence. My kid had that in a public school in NY and it was a profound eye-opener at exactly the right age.
Do the right stuff from the ground up and there's a chance it might stick. Not permanently, but if we get a healthy generation or two to start with, it's better than what we have now.
For me right now, a trailer life where I can be in open space and dark skies...contemplating the glorious years I lived in and feeling sorry for current generations...
When the biggest complaint I can muster about my 'neighbors' is that a bear ate all the chokecherries before I could get them to Mom to make jelly, I feel like I'm living a pretty charmed life.
It can be put more simply though that would take away the fun of reading your full analysis.
We are pack animals. Packs usually self-limit in size so there's only one alpha pair. Exiles who survive form new packs.
We've never lost this basic biology. It's misleading when people talk of "sheep."
What happens when a pack grows too big but there are pressures for it not to split off, the alpha team has to create levels of henchfolk to manage all the smaller components of the pack and enforce a sense of unified identity.
That never holds for long; the alpha types don't want to be controlled and they split off and followers will follow them.
To one of your points: there was never one Christianity. There were competing sects from the start. That's true of every religion with an approved scripture--i.e. one where the dissenters were killed off ad the text was codified.
But as above--that never lasts long. Anyone remember the Albigensians? They were pretty successfully exterminated or suppressed for their "heresies." At least we still know their name. Plenty of smaller communities just squashed flat into extinction.
Kissinger? It's another awful fact of life that very wretched people can be horribly perceptive and correct about many things.
You asked in that poll what readers want you to give them, right? I'd take this sort of stuff with a little bullshitting around to lighten the mix as necessary, as frequently as you'll be moved to give it away for free, and I must emphasize, without actually shrieking "poor! take pity on the poor" and humiliate myself out of existence. Let me put it this way--I have no discretionary income. Zero. I could ask my kid to give me a subscription for Christmas or my birthday--but he already helps out too much. Just sayin' so you don't misunderstand me as being some cheap bitch.
I am in the same position, but I am a cheap bitch! but really can't afford one or a hundred subscriptions. It's a curse. Money says things no doubt, but reading is the best I can do.
(I also can't read all my [free] subscriptions, but I try and get through some)
There are so many other sites I like to frequent.
And I am trying to get off the computer more often.
This is my final Substack subscription. If I ain't getting enough stimulation and information by now, I might as well give up trying. I've never read Nabokov or Pynchon so we can just call me an unlettered peasant grateful for any valuable bits of crystal she stumbles across in the mud.
It's a mixed blessing perhaps I have gorgeous views from my windows. Lets me pretend my attachment to my darling little laptop isn't depriving me of better enjoyments.
"No matter which side of the many polarized disputes you’re on, you do not live in a society that will continue to function the way you want it to if victory means essentially exterminating your opponents, salting their fields, and enslaving their children."
The problem is that society is on an unstoppable course to cease functioning as we want it to, and has been for several decades. The 2 options for those on the Right are to let the Left enslave them and destroy all they hold dear, or exterminate the Left. The 2 options for the Left are to abandon their Sacred Project of reforming the world, or exterminate the Right.
I think the unavoidable conclusion to what you're saying is that ultimately, humans are going to go extinct for the simple reason that we can't just let each other be.
No, I think it's very unlikely we'll go extinct barring global changes that probably won't be our fault.
I think humans will probably continue to exist in some form for many more millennia, but our population will undergo waves of dramatic expansion and contraction because we're very poor at managed growth (which is pretty common in nature but less expected in species with traits like ours).
But no, I don't think we're remotely near the risk of extinction because of anything happening today. I think our current civilization stands a decent chance of killing billions of us and setting us back 1000 years as a species.
If it isn't either sufficiently hopeful or absolute in its apocalypticity, I don't really know what to tell you.
It would be very bad and very sad if 6 billion or so of us died. But I don't believe it would lead to extinction.
At the risk of being rude, it seems like you just wanted a prompt to rant about several societal issues you're understandably upset about. I felt a little as though I was being lectured on these phenomena as though I were somehow unaware they existed or thought they weren't very bad.
Human thriving does not have to be reduced to a dichotomy of "everything is fine" or "literally all humans are dead forever" to justify caring about something.
I am simply stating, given my knowledge and understanding, that it is extremely unlikely that all human life can be destroyed through our own actions, barring events that would similarly threaten most other complex life on earth.
Well I wasn't intending to lecture. As far as I know, you've commented about nearly all of the above. It was more intended to be "keep in mind". Sorry if that's how it sounded.
Also, I don't think there is any "sufficient" amount of hope or pessimism that can be defined. If there is, I'm unaware of it. I was stating the points that I think support my original conclusion.
Sorry if it sounded like a rant. I'll delete it after you've had a chance to read this response because it isn't really all that important to me, despite what I believe to be the inevitable conclusion. I'm uninterested in "prompts to rant", I just write what I feel is necessary to express what I'm thinking.
I also don't think that human "thriving" needs to be reduced to anything. I think that we've set up a situation where we simultaneously are setting up massive deaths and where we cannot continue as a species if that occurs.
I don't think you have to justify anything. I think your point of view is fine.
However, I do disagree and sorry if that sounded like a rant to explain my position on the matter.
“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
"The purification of politics is an iridescent dream. Government is force. Politics is a battle for supremacy."
--Sen. John James Ingalls, R-KS (in office 1873-1891)
Maybe, eventually, more than ~1.5% of the populace will begin to believe in freedom and understand that true freedom means that someone I may not like is ALSO free - and might use that freedom for something I don't approve of - and we can quit fighting about it.
I'll not be holding my breath whilst waiting.
Pretty much this.
"But we are so much more evolved/developed nowadays, so now things are completely different due to [insert technology, law, treaty, similar of choice], so events XYZ can't happen again, especially since we all embrace [principles, -isms, creeds, other coherent school of thought]!"
Add to the above the following:
"Bit it's/wasn't >real< [communism, islam, christendom, capitalism, other], that's why it didn't work/doesn't work as the theory-dogma says it will!"
And:
"We have to believe in the [rights, privileges, prerogatives] of [table of commandments]!"
So far, the only way to avoid that triskelion of a tangled trap is to focus on concrete maters and facts, and let values and norms become evident only from what course of (in)action is suggested in any given matter. A hard sell, since belief in ideas utilises our emotional shortcuts while facts and empircisms uses conscious and thus slower thought.
Loved the text - you cut to the bone and to me that's the only way to write about such matters if what's written is to matter.
100%.
This post is more erudite than the description of your substack.
I have been thinking a lot about this too. What would a civil war these days look like? How would you know who to kill? Are we going to wear red or blue? What do you suppose will happen to the myriad entertainments if we embark on civil war? What are you going to eat while this war happens, since food in this country entirely depends on industrial processes running smoothly - the people you kill? What is left of civilization after cannibalism? Anyway, I think the idea of civil war is stupid, as are those who talk like it is a legitimate course of dealing with grievance.
Subscribed.
Welcome aboard. I hope the sincere lack of decorum will eventually reveal itself.
Sometimes in the face of increasing tyranny a lack of decorum is entirely necessary.
You'll do great in here. :-)
This contradicts your previous statement about a CW being "stupid."
If your side isn't willing to go all the way, and the other is, you'll lose everything as soon as the other side realizes this.
It might be necessary, but a CW would still be stupid.
GM is one of the best thinkers on Substack. She short-sells/aww-shucks herself as part of her shtick, but she is really good and often profound.
Your mom is really good, too.
At DOING it.
Obviously, because here I am!
"How would you know who to kill?"
That one is deceptively easy though: anyone individual or group of individuals actively trying to kill you or yours.
Problem of course being how many steps or separations from "man pointing a gun at you" you are willing and able to go - in principle, the chinese and the indians and all of Africa will spell the end of western civilisation simply by dint of numbers with no malice aforethought required - same way the brown rat replaced the black rat. Just the way of things, really. Doesn't mean they are trying to kill anyone.
And that right there is the Astroglide+WD40-lubed up slope.
How can you tell if someone is vegan?
Just wait, they'll tell you.
Ditto for Leftists. Or just look at their car bumper.
Lists aren't just useful for groceries.
A strange game.
The only winning move is not to play.
A nice answer, but what does not playing look like?
A house with a water-powered generator 3 miles from another human?
But you're still "playing"- you're paying property taxes on that plot even if you're not using any services from the people extorting it, you're still subject to the laws of the surrounding entity governing what you can or cannot do on the property, etc.
We can opt not to participate, but we are all stuck playing. There is no terra incognita.
There’s a significant difference between what Sim suggests and what so many, both Red and Blue Tribe, currently do.
It may not be perfectly abstaining, but it certainly at least comes close to de facto abstaining.
Perfect being the enemy of good, here.
Well if that's the bar for 'not playing' then obviously nobody can do it.
That's kind of my point. They can always take that home away from you if they really want to.
That’s always true.
There’s virtue in the effort. And in making that choice to take it cost something.
That’s not a terrible start.
Another option would be getting in the thick of it and slapping both sides around. Try and pull them back from the edge.
And unless you’ve accepted the possibility of martyrdom, consider something else.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/?ref_=tt_mv_close
How about a nice game of chess?
FWIW, I'm about 2 hours downwind of Grand Forks....
Someone who stands in the middle of the road tends to get hit by traffic coming from both directions.
People team up to gain power, if you aren't on a team, you don't have the power to protect yourself from those that do.
Well, I definitely don’t participate in IRL Frogger.
Jokes aside, your point barely rises above base intimidation and isn’t really that persuasive.
I’ll simply refer you to the Spartan response to Philip of Macedon.
“If.”
It's not intimidation, it's observation and prediction.
Read up on wars, especially civil wars. People who want to be left alone are often victimized by both sides. People who take a side are less likely to be victimized by one of the sides.
Moving to condensation, I see. That’s not convincing either.
If you want left alone, it’s your responsibility to protect yourself.
The folks who are bad at that don’t negate the choice. It just means they were bad at it.
I'm not sure what water moving from gas to liquid has to do with this.
You remind me of survivalist/ 2A fanatics, who desperately need to believe all they require to escape what is coming is to invest in physical items they can store and look at.
If you are desperate to cope, then stop responding and I'll stop trying to wake you up to the hard reality that teams strongly tend to beat individuals, no matter how strong the individual. Again, read history. Almost no one gets to claim they are on "ghoul" to sit out civil unpleasantness or tyranny, and we are going to get 1 or both.
I think I see the problem. Did you possibly presume, based on my earlier comment, that I had some hyper pro individualist mindset?
I don’t. I was responding in the context of the author’s post, suggesting it was worthwhile to stay away from the currently dominant sides of the culture war (the so called red tribe or blue tribe).
Anyway. Trying to pull this train back on the tracks before we just start going ree.
Now we insult a perfectly honest mistake (I meant condescending, of course) and move to name calling and questioning my psychological state.
Still not persuasive.
Your move, sweetie!
You can always make a third team.
If you've got the balls.
Or a fourth. Or fifth. Or a heavily armed sixth.
This guy gets it.
I'm in the process of doing so.
Then kindly kill yourself- there is no other way "not to play".
You are a useless human.
You're outta here.
PSA: I gave them a prorated refund for their subscription and canceled it.
I guess I need to state this: we do not speak to each other in this manner here. We do not tell each other to kill themselves and we do not call each other useless humans.
Have some fucking class.
BTW. Excellent article. I learned a lot.
My pleasure. I have probably two or three more parts in my head. This is a big topic we all need to work on.
I fear a dictator that exploits this new age mono-cultural potent tech-collectivism more than some sort of civil war.
It's more likely that people will fashion their own shackles by relinquishing their data/information, etc. a little at a time.
I'm not sure force even needs to be used anymore; it's more efficient to just force someone out of the system.
Lol
You first, cupcake.
I think you are right, nonetheless you are playing to my prejudices, so:
Some people, actual pedos, who in a population of billions, is no small number. They are somebody's wife, husband, or child.
Yet: Pedos delenda est.
Now what?
Well, we can say the same about criminal justice: some percentage of suspects are guilty, an uncaught criminal is an ongoing risk to all.
Or, simply, I've just accused YOU, codex, of being a pedo, and pedos delenda est. You say you're not, which is what a pedo would say.
Better safe than sorry?
You could say it, sure. That's a bit of a blind. "Because it can be abused upu cannot have X", I have a knee-jerk objection to. Not sure that's rational or reasonable. Prejudice makes you stupid.
So:
Why cannot one have An Inexcusable Thing? Why must all judgment be binary: either suspended entirely or grossly erroneous? Who decides? Why? How? Can anyone reinvent the wheel or are we doomed?
You're perhaps inadverently making my point for me.
One can absolutely have an inexcusable thing. My question is, how far is one willing to go in pursuit of eradicating the inexcusable thing? I 100% agree with you that no one should involve children in any sort of sexual activity of any kind whatsoever, including showing them any sorts of pictures or anything else you could remotely put in this category.
Since we must kill pedos, should we be willing to even take a chance that my purely verbal accusation of you is true? Might it be better to just kill you, to make sure?
I saw this constantly working for CPS. The pursuit of various inexcusable things (including pedos) meant that mere accusations permanently destroyed the lives of transparently innocent people embroiled in custody disputes or nasty divorces.
The problem is that a sufficiently absolute- supremacist- position means that there need be no standard beyond "all or nothing." We do not need due process or a reasonable examination of how publicly harmful something is if we have decided its existence is intolerable, the argument goes. If you are trying to posit that I do not find this analogously useless with "nothing is forbidden," then you're putting words in my mouth.
In my lifetime, it was a common assumption that most gay men were pedophiles. Should every openly gay man be immediately investigated for possible acts of pedophilia, since it is inexcusable?
I have known many, many LGBT (of all the letters) people and don't have a religious tradition that condemns their conduct, preferences, or existence on its face. I would literally stake my life that of the 100 or so of these people I can recall knowing personally, not one was a pedophile and it would have been monstrous to treat them as such, or even as de facto suspect of such.
I do not want anyone waving their privates at children. I don't want children being around anyone's privates or pictures of privates outside of a biology class. I don't want children in any environment where adults are discussing, engaging in, or displaying sexual activity.
We can say "drag queen story hour is disgustingly inappropriate and should be illegal on some level" without saying "gay men lead to drag queen story hour, ipso facto."
This is the point the article attempts to make. There is a supremacist position that any tolerance of sexual minorities leads to the worst corruption of society and that it should all be considered a gateway to disgusting degradation, including pedophilia. There is another supremacist position that absolutely no sexual conduct should ever be forbidden- and furthermore, that critical examination of the societal impact of the existence of sexual minorities is in itself a forbidden question.
They have both risen to sufficient prominence that the vast majority of people find themselves being forced to choose between two absolute tribal affiliations, neither of which are wholly palatable to many, because the two supremacist viewpoints have allied together to completely eradicate the existence of a nuanced medium.
Not trying to put words in your mouth: I picked the pedo example because I figured it was safe to assume we were on the same page with it.
So yeah, how far do we get to go for what things, as you wrote. Embedded was (and I am probably mistaken - figuring my own thoughts out as the convo goes forward) the idea that nothing justifies the scorched earth approach.
Where I started, and for the reasons you gave.
What I am trying to get at is the continuum between nuking it from orbit and burning a firebreak. Or just putting up a fire extinguisher, and how we end up throwing it a party, and nuking the nukers.
And I just deleted the several paragraphs. This is not a convo we can have online. Sorry about that.
Good thinky thoughts to chew over though.
It is probably way too nuanced to have in the comments section of a substack, yes.
But I'm glad to know your thoughts on it are sufficiently nuanced and considered that such a channel is inadequate. That's enough for me to consider you of my tribe.
Oh, and I intended the "rhetorical 'you'" in that bit about words in my mouth.
This is way better than any college course I ever took. Love your Civil War passage btw. Having been raised in a "Southern Aristocrat" family, but spending most of my adult life in the Boston area, has afforded me a unique perspective which has gone through several stages of evolution in my 75 years on this planet. I have always been "plagued" with the ability to see both sides of societal issues. In some ways that is a good trait, but in others, not so much. I can't count the number of times that I have been asked the question "who's side are you on anyway?"
Things are defiantly better in Gutter.
That the consequences of reconstruction continue to drive economic, social, and racial divisions in the South is obvious to anyone with eyes to see and a basic textbook printed before 2000.
Any reading material on this to suggest?
Three good ones. None are perfect.
The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North (Richardson)
West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (Also Richardson)
She's generally good. She has written other histories but I don't own/haven't read them.
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (Foner)
Foner is really vocally progressive and annoyingly fixated on critical race theory and it shows up in his book. He's a NY Times darling, but this is still a good book because of its focus on how the Constitution evolved as a result of the period (very differently than the way it was headed).
"Think about what victory in ideological conflict looks like, what it would take in practical terms to execute it, once your vanquished foes lay helpless at your feet, and if this process is in itself worthwhile"
Ideological purge doesn't require a thought experiment as we saw plenty of this throughout the twentieth century (and before of course, but muh recencey bias or something). Unfortunately too many people are much more interested in their place in history than learning about or from it.
Did you notice the last picture in the post? :)
But seriously, it makes one wonder what an ideological purge circa 2022 would look like. It wouldn't be exactly the same as the totalitarian regimes of the mid-20th.
That's mainly the question I rhetorically raised- try to imagine Stalinist mass graves in the age of social media and Google Earth.
As I understand we have populations in China right now being dealt with. Africa has populations as well facing terrible
Oh yeah. Big time. Much of what I said is actively happening in China right now.
My perspective- as it was rooted in an examination of the implications of the Treaty of Westphalia- is admittedly occidental in this essay.
China has an ancient and rich tradition of being absolutely monstrous to its own people. Post-Enlightenment Europe, less so.
Nice opening Act I. I look forward to what follows.
The game, of civilized society, has had many rules penciled in over the millennia. The game, has always been one of survival, be it of ideas, things or peoples. The game, has no winning move. We all play a part, but none of us will see the final move, from this earth.
Excellent piece.
We need a do-over. Seems impossible, though
No, we need simpler straightforward actions.
Too many people suffer from malignant boredom even if they seem quite busy. Most people don't do useful work. Making a lot of money as a glorified customer service rep doesn't bring a sense of tired fulfillment at the end of the day. Too many people go to college who don't belong there and need make-do jobs once they graduate.
Bring back trade high schools. We had those in NY in my younger days and smart kids with zero intellectual interests were prepared for extremely useful non-expiring skilled jobs.
Stop giving people stuff for free. No one values things they don't work for in one way or another.
Stop pathologizing everything and letting people use suspect diagnoses as leading identities.
Stop pretending "Their cult bad! My cult good!" Let people believe anything they want to but ensure they don't impose their beliefs on the governance of a civil society.
We need a full generational clear-out of nonsense. Get SEL out of every school program everywhere. Education isn't therapy, it's education and should prepare young people for practical life.
Ensure every middle-school curriculum includes basic budgeting and financial competence. My kid had that in a public school in NY and it was a profound eye-opener at exactly the right age.
Do the right stuff from the ground up and there's a chance it might stick. Not permanently, but if we get a healthy generation or two to start with, it's better than what we have now.
You've got my vote.
Agree with you 100 percent.
It's like qutting the sauce - it only looks impossible until ten years later.
A do over starting from when?
1800?😂
For me right now, a trailer life where I can be in open space and dark skies...contemplating the glorious years I lived in and feeling sorry for current generations...
When the biggest complaint I can muster about my 'neighbors' is that a bear ate all the chokecherries before I could get them to Mom to make jelly, I feel like I'm living a pretty charmed life.
Yes!
Well, this is excellent, damn you.
It can be put more simply though that would take away the fun of reading your full analysis.
We are pack animals. Packs usually self-limit in size so there's only one alpha pair. Exiles who survive form new packs.
We've never lost this basic biology. It's misleading when people talk of "sheep."
What happens when a pack grows too big but there are pressures for it not to split off, the alpha team has to create levels of henchfolk to manage all the smaller components of the pack and enforce a sense of unified identity.
That never holds for long; the alpha types don't want to be controlled and they split off and followers will follow them.
To one of your points: there was never one Christianity. There were competing sects from the start. That's true of every religion with an approved scripture--i.e. one where the dissenters were killed off ad the text was codified.
But as above--that never lasts long. Anyone remember the Albigensians? They were pretty successfully exterminated or suppressed for their "heresies." At least we still know their name. Plenty of smaller communities just squashed flat into extinction.
Kissinger? It's another awful fact of life that very wretched people can be horribly perceptive and correct about many things.
You asked in that poll what readers want you to give them, right? I'd take this sort of stuff with a little bullshitting around to lighten the mix as necessary, as frequently as you'll be moved to give it away for free, and I must emphasize, without actually shrieking "poor! take pity on the poor" and humiliate myself out of existence. Let me put it this way--I have no discretionary income. Zero. I could ask my kid to give me a subscription for Christmas or my birthday--but he already helps out too much. Just sayin' so you don't misunderstand me as being some cheap bitch.
I am in the same position, but I am a cheap bitch! but really can't afford one or a hundred subscriptions. It's a curse. Money says things no doubt, but reading is the best I can do.
(I also can't read all my [free] subscriptions, but I try and get through some)
There are so many other sites I like to frequent.
And I am trying to get off the computer more often.
This is my final Substack subscription. If I ain't getting enough stimulation and information by now, I might as well give up trying. I've never read Nabokov or Pynchon so we can just call me an unlettered peasant grateful for any valuable bits of crystal she stumbles across in the mud.
It's a mixed blessing perhaps I have gorgeous views from my windows. Lets me pretend my attachment to my darling little laptop isn't depriving me of better enjoyments.
"No matter which side of the many polarized disputes you’re on, you do not live in a society that will continue to function the way you want it to if victory means essentially exterminating your opponents, salting their fields, and enslaving their children."
The problem is that society is on an unstoppable course to cease functioning as we want it to, and has been for several decades. The 2 options for those on the Right are to let the Left enslave them and destroy all they hold dear, or exterminate the Left. The 2 options for the Left are to abandon their Sacred Project of reforming the world, or exterminate the Right.
To me, you just described Communist China!
I think the unavoidable conclusion to what you're saying is that ultimately, humans are going to go extinct for the simple reason that we can't just let each other be.
No, I think it's very unlikely we'll go extinct barring global changes that probably won't be our fault.
I think humans will probably continue to exist in some form for many more millennia, but our population will undergo waves of dramatic expansion and contraction because we're very poor at managed growth (which is pretty common in nature but less expected in species with traits like ours).
But no, I don't think we're remotely near the risk of extinction because of anything happening today. I think our current civilization stands a decent chance of killing billions of us and setting us back 1000 years as a species.
I stand by my answer.
If it isn't either sufficiently hopeful or absolute in its apocalypticity, I don't really know what to tell you.
It would be very bad and very sad if 6 billion or so of us died. But I don't believe it would lead to extinction.
At the risk of being rude, it seems like you just wanted a prompt to rant about several societal issues you're understandably upset about. I felt a little as though I was being lectured on these phenomena as though I were somehow unaware they existed or thought they weren't very bad.
Human thriving does not have to be reduced to a dichotomy of "everything is fine" or "literally all humans are dead forever" to justify caring about something.
I am simply stating, given my knowledge and understanding, that it is extremely unlikely that all human life can be destroyed through our own actions, barring events that would similarly threaten most other complex life on earth.
Well I wasn't intending to lecture. As far as I know, you've commented about nearly all of the above. It was more intended to be "keep in mind". Sorry if that's how it sounded.
Also, I don't think there is any "sufficient" amount of hope or pessimism that can be defined. If there is, I'm unaware of it. I was stating the points that I think support my original conclusion.
Sorry if it sounded like a rant. I'll delete it after you've had a chance to read this response because it isn't really all that important to me, despite what I believe to be the inevitable conclusion. I'm uninterested in "prompts to rant", I just write what I feel is necessary to express what I'm thinking.
I also don't think that human "thriving" needs to be reduced to anything. I think that we've set up a situation where we simultaneously are setting up massive deaths and where we cannot continue as a species if that occurs.
I don't think you have to justify anything. I think your point of view is fine.
However, I do disagree and sorry if that sounded like a rant to explain my position on the matter.
I don't think it's necessary to delete a comment because we disagree on its content.
yeah, I would have liked to read it.
Thought provoking. More tales of your boar coming up?