Non-american here. No one is more despised in our culture than thieves who destroy people's livelihood. I just read a few articles from academics who seriously justify looting and destroying stores. And most of these stores are owned by people in the neighborhood. Just hearing these assholes who've never worked outside their university, never used their own homes and soul as collateral to get a business running, and never struggled to keep their employees and business working, just makes me realize how far these people have gone. Hearing rioters cry and shout about Floyd, as if they personally know the guy, and apathetically shrugging and saying that it's the "voice of the unheard" while throwing a Molotov at their neighbors store that also employs their parents or friends, is the stupidest societal self-harm I've ever seen in my life. We have a saying, if you don't want to be treated like an animal, don't act like one.
actually he removed the full podcast with Bryan from The Portal must have said something that gave him a bad look and decided to keep these political pieces
I know it might not be interesting to everyone, but C.S. Lewis has a great book on the dangers of a Utopia. It's called The Abolition of Man. Check it out if you want a good description of what a despotic utopia would be like. You just have to get past the first few chapters as they lay the ground work for his argument.
C.S lewis remains an underrated literary genius. Idk whether it's his relation to Christianity, but I hope he gets appreciated more in the future as a writer who has a lot to say. Almost prophetic in a sense
From Stalin to Pol Pot, communism became more and more violent and irrational as it spread and developed as public policy and ideology. I would hate to see what would happen the next time it's tried.
“You my friend, don’t make the trains run on time. You’ve never had to turn a profit.” BRAVO! And right on. Bunch of idiots out there. The road to hell is paved with peer review and good intentions.
Utopianism is not the same as fanaticism. Utopianism is the idea that there might be a more optimal way to live than the present, and that there might be a practical way to get there, by creating some new systems besides the current one. It could even be subject to the scientific method, using social psychology and Moral Foundations Theory. Fanaticism is the idea that there is only one way to do that, or one size fits all, or that we have the perfect model of happiness, or the inability to recognize tradeoffs. Most new religions, companies and civilizations are founded by utopians. Collectivists can be fanatics, but they don't have to be, especially if they realize that humans are not ants or bees, but have both an individual level and a collective level and that these have different needs, hence tradeoffs between them arise. Actually there are many levels which are both collective and individual: UN, nations, companies, cities, villages, families, human beings, organs, cells, gene networks and genes. Fanatical capitalism focuses only on human beings and companies. Fanatical socialism/communism focuses only on nation-states. The lower levels may be easier to model, and have simpler feedbacks than the higher levels. Purity/disgust is one of the dimensions of morality that distinguishes liberals from conservatives according to Haidt, but it appears not totally consistent with the wokesters who because of their insistence on a certain type of purity appear conservative (relative to conservatives though they probably care less about whatever the sacred is for conservative groups, so it might be consistent--should be tested empirically). It is essential for group cohesion to unify around the sacred (pure) and keep out the profane (impure). But if that is done perfectly it leads to stagnation. The revulsion/disgust of Jordan Peterson to collectivism (and Bryan Callen?) might be because of this, or because the fanatic collectivists fail to realize that there are lower levels (and maybe higher) than the collective that need attention for humans to be happy. Maybe Jordan and Bryan are fanatical individualists, trying to protect the alleged purity of individual human beings from the impure/evil collectivists, only seeing the benefits of individualism but not the costs, only seeing the costs of collectivism but not the benefits. Maybe Eric is a fanatical Progress devotee, trying to protect the purity of scientific, technological and economic Progress from impure/evil "regress" or stagnation, only seeing the benefits of Progress but not the costs (to our sense of meaning, to the integrity of our communities). There is also the idea of a holographic universe where the higher levels can be present recursively in the lower levels and allow communication between the levels, and that is what is sacred and worth defending and unifying around...
I have been told that I can rub people the wrong way or that the things I say scare them. And I guess the reason I can say things that scare people is because they have a psychologically constructed Matrix of information for which they depend upon? I don't know the delusion of my reality or its truth so my journey is one of discovery. It is as if I have challenged many of these great ideas that people are scared to think about? Perhaps it is my battle with the existential dilemma and nihilism? People can't face the darkness inside themselves or the truth about who they really are without embracing it completely. I try to be a good person because I know that I am not, are you a good person?
You might be able to fool the majority for a while, like any society. but the american hivemind I would argue is harder to forever bury the truth from. Our society has organically grown to be skeptical.
Thanx for producing such relevant podcasts. Great subject. But at least you still have some form of democracy over there in the US. People don't realize it, but in western Europe we have actually been living under a Communist-light system for the past 20 years. 80% of all national laws (so of all individual EU countries) in the EU is derived from EU law. All EU law is drawn up by the UNELECTED (!!) European Commission (not the EU parliament which is just a powerless clap-machine doema, hosted in a large Brussels building which is named after 'Altiero Spinelli', a communist revolutionary). Imagine, you can't vote away this commission what ever they do, which is why they ended up doing the bidding of the highest paying billionaire currently. An absolute nightmare we live in. Just imagine 93% of all Europeans have never heard of Miss Von der Leyen, yet she is the head of the EU commission, a position comparable to Trump....I hope you can preserve democracy in some form over there in the US because from experience I can tell you living in a communist EU area is a very very dystopian experience...
Would it be too brave of me to ask you to elaborate ? You mentioned "dystopian experience" when speaking of living in the EU presently ... Are you comfortable with providing examples which an American could not appreciate at this moment in time ? And which privileges are Americans likely to lose if we go down the same road as the one which the EU has chosen for itself ? Greatly appreciated and wonderful comment :) It sure got my attention !
