astrolabe
4d ago
I should caveat that I've not watched much Destiny, but from what I have seen some of his rhetoric is quite extreme. On some issues he comes across as likeable and open minded, however he also seems to have an attitude that it's ok to engage in smears and underhanded tactics because his perceived political opponents do it, which is a worldview I find deeply unproductive.
What turned me off him the most was how he mocked the man who was killed at the Trump rally. I understand that people can get heated in the moment and make some ill-advised tweets, but when pressed on it while on Piers Morgan he completely doubled down and defended it (you can find the clips on YouTube if interested). I find that behaviour repugnant, no matter who it comes from.
astrolabe
4d ago
I suppose the main way I view this differently is that I don't see the masterminding of a strategy / the Third International etc. as being necessary at all. If I imagine two possible worlds:
- One where university academics infiltrate the academy in the 1960s with the explicit aim of indoctrinating students into socialist ideology, based on the strategy outlined at the Third International; and
- One where a new generation of university academics take positions in the 1960s, who find ideas of socialism interesting and engaging and cool, and therefore write papers on it and teach it;
I really don't see much difference in outcome (in which case scenario two would win as it involves less complexity). Part of the reason I think this is because it has been quite a gradual development, happening over multiple decades, which seems more plausible to me as driven bottom-up rather than top-down.
I guess what I'm saying is, what makes you say that what we see today is the result of masterminding by socialist leaders, rather than the result of an emergent shift in the culture? There was certainly a fair amount of propaganda coming from the USSR, as well as Western apologists, but is the idea that there was more than this? The idea of a counter-culture forming in academia seems fairly unremarkable to me, as does the idea that it would attach onto socialist ideas given the existence of the USSR, but I am open to being shown clearer links between the two.
If I had to speculate, I'd put the changes down to the institutionalisation of science and academia post WWII. A model of government funding by committee allows for the emergence of fields that are uncorrelated with either reality or the broader community, and if there's funding to be had academics will be drawn there.
Gay marriage might be an exception since it is broadly popular, at least since after the US enacted it. But what about other woke/leftist cultural programs? Immigration for example seems extremely unpopular, and yet all the European governments keep increasing it anyway.
I wanted to point out that not all cultural programs arise from the same source, and gay marriage seemed like a good example of that. From my experience the debate generally came before the dominance of 'wokeness', and the more radical leftists were not supportive - in my experience the Marxists and socialists regarded marriage as a patriarchal, heteronormative and capitalist institution that perpetuated the status quo, while queerness offered a way of destabilising that. The argument for gay marriage was driven by liberal (in the John Stuart Mill sense) and even to some degree conservative concerns, which I think accounts for its general acceptance.
Immigration is an interesting one, and there are quite a few facets to it. I follow the UK more closely than the rest of Europe, and it's worth noting that there have been very high rates of immigration under both the conservative and now the labour governments. It's known to be a major issue for the electorate, and governments have repeatedly promised to reduce the intake, so as you say why do they keep increasing it anyway? Here the answer is almost certainly economics - since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, most European countries (and Australia) have had essentially flat GDP per capita growth (see e.g. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=US-AU-GB-FR), so the only way to keep the economy growing is to import more people. This is not a good long term strategy, but a sharp cut to the immigration intake would result in recession, which are infamously unkind to the electoral prospects of governments. (A Home Secretary in the previous conservative government in the UK, Suella Braverman, has talked about this, and recounted being shut down by Treasury in Cabinet when trying to discuss reducing the immigration intake consistent with the government's election promises).
The US of course has different drivers, as the economic situation is quite different (though there would still be a strong demand amongst certain groups for low-wage workers). Media and the general attitudes of people in the PMC will have different drivers again, and here cultural explanations make more sense. I won't expound on these as I think the discussion of them is fairly widespread.
astrolabe
4d ago
Thanks for the examples, you're right that I shouldn't have been quite so strong in my assertion to imply there were no counterexamples. I would maintain though that the very small number of them (two highlighted out of I think forty? countries in Europe) does demonstrate that is has mostly been via public debate.
legislature watering down the definition of marriage is consistent with the view that "human rights" are too sacred to be subject to the whims of the masses
Sorry if I'm being obtuse, but I don't understand this argument - legislation is the way in a democratic society for the will of the masses to be implemented, as it's instituted by parliaments comprised of elected representatives. The criticism of human rights frameworks is that they subvert the will of the populous by superseding the legislation enacted by their representatives (e.g. courts such as the European Court of Human Rights overturning legislation enacted by the government).
any institution can grant rights
I feel like we're wandering a bit here into the issue of the legitimacy of government regulation, which my post wasn't addressing - my intent was to point out a pretty clear counterexample to the idea that all the cultural changes in the past few decades have been implemented without being subject to votes.
Briefly, though, whether one approves of it or not, marriage has been regulated by government for centuries (the earliest marriage act in England going back to the 1750s). It's a well defined legal instrument, which is tied in with other well defined legal instruments (such as inheritance, powers of attorney, etc.) As such, the rights (and obligations) of marriage cannot be granted by arbitrary institutions.
astrolabe
5d ago
It's interesting speculation, but generally the LGB organisations have taken up the T mantle, and this is no different in the UK (with Stonewall being a strong proponent of trans issues).
Two plausible-ish reasons I've seen come up to explain it are:
- The presence of JK Rowling, who was an early un-cancellable advocate for women's rights
- (Hilariously) that the years of Brexit shenanigans occupied all the political oxygen at just the right moment to delay the introduction of the topic for long enough that an opposing movement was already coalescing by the time it started to pick up steam (this idea is attributable to Helen Joyce, though I couldn't point to which podcast I heard her mention it).
astrolabe
5d ago
It's not that difficult to believe, because it's all conceptual and doesn't cash out anywhere - no-one can point to someone in heaven (or hell) that they think shouldn't be there, so there's never a challenge to the belief system.
astrolabe
5d ago
This is a good answer, though I'll just add that the current view of hell you describe is very much the post Vatican II (ie from the 60s onwards) position. Prior to that there was a lot more focus on the concept of hell as punishment and torment etc.
There is also some debate amongst modern theologians about the nature of hell, as the idea that it's meant to be both eternal and due entirely to the self-rejection of God can be difficult to square, though this is certainty the current Catholic position.
astrolabe
5d ago
No, this take is entirely consistent with the actual context of the time. The emphasis on the crime being due to homosexuality is the more modern reinterpretation.
Other ancient texts such as the Talmud and the Midrash go into significantly more detail about the sins of Sodom, and they revolve entirely around lack of hospitality, cruelty, and miserliness.
The biblical story of Sodom makes sense in this context when you understand that threats of rape were commonly used to ward off intruders. As just one example, in Roman culture the god Priapus (also depicted with an enormously exaggerated phallus) was frequently used as a 'no-entry' symbol at the entrance to properties, with the implied (or in many cases with humorous inscriptions) that any trespassers would be subject to sexual violence.
It's actually a great case study in how easy it is to misinterpret stories out of other cultures - something that as you say can seem entirely obvious can have very different meanings to the people and cultures of the time.
astrolabe
5d ago
It surprises me that people put so much weight on her lack of enjoyment. If you asked me ahead of time if even the most sex positive person would enjoy a continuous eight hour marathon sex session, I'd say of course not, based on how physically demanding it would be if nothing else. It's also not unusual for people who are physically exhausted to become emotional.
Lots of people also have unrealistic fantasies that they derive more pleasure from the thought of than the practice. Presumably people are actually enjoying the sense of thrill when contemplating something taboo. It's also typical for people to be unaware of their own psychology in this way.
astrolabe
5d ago
This seems to be a common framing, but I generally disagree, as I think it elides the actual dynamics at play.
Perhaps your description is somewhat exaggerated or simplified for effect, but describing the process as one where socialist leaders are masterminding a strategy to take over universities and then society implies a very high degree of coordination that I just don't see. Who are these leaders? Where do they meet? What's their organisational structure? How do they retain such cohesion over decades?
You can certainly find examples of academics talking about this idea, and I'm sure everyone is familiar by now with the infamous "Long march through the institutions" quote, but that's not how culture works. Culture changes institutions, but there's a huge gap between recognising this obvious fact and having a small group of people able to push coherent and sustained radical cultural change over long time scales.
I view the cause and effect as almost completed reverse. Culture changes first, driven in my view by structural changes in society, which prompts people to jump on board. This doesn't happen all at once or in the same way for all segments of society, as there are different structural forces at play depending on your demographics.
You don't put it to an election because "human rights are too important to be voted on,"
I suspect you may be drawing this view from the United States, where there has been a lot more judicial activism on these issues, but is simply inaccurate for most countries that have enacted the changes you're talking about. Gay marriage is a recent example - in every European country I can think of, it was legislated following public debate (sometimes following explicit election commitments), and often with concessions such as the use of conscious votes not typically allowed by political parties. The only exceptions are places like Ireland, where they enacted it via a referendum.
astrolabe
5d ago
It's fair that only looking at the murder rate might obscure otherwise meaningful differences in safety levels. However there is also a very good reason that murder is often used in discussions of crime rates (including by historians); it's the most straightforward and most unbiased statistic, for the simple reason that it's hard to hide that someone has been killed. Once you get into other crimes, you start getting much more bogged down into things such as reporting rates, definitions, etc., which make comparisons rather fraught.
astrolabe
6d ago
I don't disagree that the licensing bodies must be contributing to the issue, but I'm not sure this is fully explanatory. In every healthcare system I'm aware of, including well regarded ones in Europe and Australia, there are similar complaints about licensing bodies introducing artificial scarcity by limiting the number of doctors to keep their salaries high. It could be that this same issue is just an order of magnitude worse in the United States than elsewhere, though then I'd want to go a step further and look for the cause of that discrepancy.
Agree that preventative and routine care is necessary to avoid costs down the line, though I'll again point to places like the Netherlands to demonstrate that private health insurance is not inherently incompatible with this. Their system mandates that everyone take out private health insurance (with subsidies provided as needed), combined with government regulation of the base level of service that must be provided, which includes the general checkup / preventative type care.
astrolabe
6d ago
Insurance is a useful model when there is high variability in potential costs. This is certainly true of healthcare, where outcomes range from regular checkups to major surgery. In any given year, healthcare expenditure will not be normally distributed across the population, but instead heavily skewed to a small segment. (I suspect this would also be true even considering the variance in individual lifetime healthcare costs, though it would be difficult to gather this data).
So while it's true that people interact far more frequently with health insurance than other forms of insurance, this doesn't really address the core reason for having an insurance model, which is to protect against those high variance outcomes. Another way to think about this - if healthcare costs were stable and predictable, you wouldn't need government involvement at all (apart from welfare subsidies), as it could be treated like any other essential item you budget for such as food.
To my mind the issue is more a free market vs government regulation issue, and whether or not you have insurers is less relevant. After all, public systems like the NHS are still effectively an insurance model, just one run by the government. The Netherlands may be a useful case study to look at, as its system is entirely based on private insurance, but it is heavily regulated and seems to function fairly well.
I don't have nearly enough familiarity with the US healthcare system to know where it's going wrong, but at least from the anecdotes I hear a lot of it sounds like toothless regulators (or just plain lack of regulation). For example, not knowing what a treatment will actually cost in advance seems to be a common complaint and one that's frankly pretty incomprehensible to me from my experiences in Australia (with both public and private healthcare), as knowing the cost of a service before receiving it is a pretty basic aspect of consumer law. Any provider attempting that sort of thing here would get hefty fines from the regulator. This is a guess though, and it's likely lots of factors, and the US system could well be at a disadvantage just due to the size of the country and the complexity that introduces.
astrolabe
7d ago
Thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate it. I'll have a look into active recollection.
This is not how a vest is buttoned up (you leave the last button undone). Why? There's probably some historical reason but today it is a subtle signal that you've taken the time to become knowledgeable about the fashion and you aren't being an inauthentic and clumsy imitator.
I'd always heard that this was attributed to King Edward VII (late 19th / early 20th century). While Prince of Wales he apparently became too rotund to fasten the bottom button, and his courtiers imitated this style. (A quick Google suggests this as the reason, but doesn't seem to be definitive and some other possibilities are given, so it may be apocryphal).
Apparently a lot of etiquette boils down to something the court copied from a king or queen. Not surprising, as how quickly you adopt a new trend would be a reliable signal of how close you are to high status people (exemplified in the monarch). This also predicts that the fashion will change by the time that it's diffused out to the general public, as it has ceased to be a good indicator.
In the case of the undone waistcoat button, a corollary of this is that the trend probably only exists because waistcoats themselves went out of fashion. If we'd been wearing waistcoats all this time, a trend from the early 20th century wouldn't have survived that long! (Or it would have cycled out and back in to fashion at least once).
At the highest meta-level I thus generally think of taste as being a hard to fake status signal (which isn't quite the same as knowledge and expertise, though does require it).
astrolabe
12d ago
The Chinese have no great imperialist instinct
Throughout most of it's history China had a tributary empire, regarding itself as the centre of civilisation (hence the 'Middle/Central Kingdom'). Neighbouring states were generally forced to adopt Chinese customs and pay tribute (with those that didn't being considered barbarians). It also expanded considerably over the centuries.
It wasn't colonial in the same way as Western European powers were and didn't have overseas territorial expansion or settler colonies (presumably largely due to China having such extensive land borders and territory to expand into), but it was definitely imperialistic.
One might argue that imperial Chinese history has little to no bearing on the posture of the modern Chinese state. As I understand we don't have good insight into the internal dynamics and political factions within the CCP, so it's difficult to talk definitively, but I do think it's pertinent that:
- The period from the 19th century up to the formation of the current People's Republic of China is known as the Century of Humiliation, which emphasises China's loss of sovereignty and exploitation at the hands of European powers. Restoration of territorial integrity and becoming a global superpower is seen as a response to this. Personally, I think that the long history of China as the perceived centre of civilisation commanding tribute from surrounding nations is undoubtably relevant here.
- Unlike say the US, China is a major importer of food (with relatively little arable land compared to its population) and energy (especially oil). Even if it wanted to, due to this it cannot be isolationist in the same way that the US now arguably could since the advent of fracking.
In terms of foreign relations policy the argument is more mixed. Certainly the CCP's stated foreign relations principles generally emphasise territorial respect, non-aggression and non-interference, and as I understand it the CCP does generally vote in accordance with these at the UN. However:
- The CCP is frequently belligerent with its neighbours, and has the view that any territory formally part of the Chinese empire is rightfully theirs.
- While it is always difficult to determine intent, it's quite plausible that this foreign policy position is a temporary posture. Its origins are from Xiaoping who came to power of the CCP in the 1970s, and while it emphasised the avoidance of controversy and use of cooperation, it was based on a Chinese idiom about biding one's time while building up strength.
- Since the 2010s, and with China being in a much stronger position, the CCP's public diplomacy has definitely been much more combative (being colloquially dubbed 'Wolf Warrior' diplomacy).
astrolabe
12d ago
Why don’t we just let China have Taiwan and the South China Sea?
Ignoring geopolitics, which others have commented on, Taiwan produces over half of the world's semiconductors and almost all of the most advanced ones.
War between China and Taiwan would almost certainly throw global supply chains into chaos in the short to medium term (possibly longer, depending on how intact the industry remained after any conflict), as well as cede an advantage to China in fields such as AI which require the most advanced chips.
astrolabe
12d ago
Suspending my materialist assumptions, with great effort, I moved through life with the constant idea that (a) something was actively providing my existence, and (b) it was actively observing me.
Are you able to expand on how you achieved that? Particularly how you got from suspending materialism to (a) and (b)?
Asking as someone curious who took two months out this year for a walking pilgrimage meditating on similar themes. I didn't have much struggle suspending my materialistic worldview (after all it's a model of reality, not reality itself, and as you say there are salient aspects of experience that it doesn't currently explain), and I'm about as sure as I can be that I was genuinely open to a religious or spiritual experience. While it was extremely beneficial and enriching, if anything I felt the absence of the something you describe.
I'd second the comment about exercise, as well as trying to get more activity throughout the day. Some short fairly intense bursts of activity every hour or two can be helpful in keeping energy levels high (things like bodyweight exercises and jump rope).
It can be difficult to start on an exercise push when you're feeling exhausted, but it's helpful to remember that by and large if you want your body to generate energy you need to use energy, otherwise it defaults to rest and digest mode.
Ensuring you're eating ok and getting enough sleep is also pretty key in my experience.
Lastly I'd add that it's ok to spend some time staring at the wall, if that's what you need at the moment. At least for me, part of burnout comes from that sense of pushing against what I feel like I should be doing, and it can be helpful to acknowledge that I need a period of recuperation and not to beat myself up about it.
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