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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   30251 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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But we will never stop dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

Why not? Were people in the Middle Ages doing so? Or did they hold that

The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate.

And that the world is fallen, we are barred from Eden by the sin of Adam, the poor we will always have with us, and perfection will only be in the Kingdom to come?

People have always worked to make things a little better, but they accepted that some things are just facts of life, that cannot be changed, only endured. Only with the "Enlightenment" did the West really start trying to immanentize the eschaton.

Why can't we reverse this? Why can't we get back to people accepting that parts of life, including the government from time to time, are simply going to suck, and that's just how it will always be?

Much as with the medieval era, it seems like a total civilizational collapse back into barbarism and pre-industrial technology would probably do the trick, so why not something less extreme?

Why can't we reverse this? Why can't we get back to people accepting that parts of life, including the government from time to time, are simply going to suck, and that's just how it will always be?

I hope I don't need to point out that this is a hard sell to anyone in the information age. Please, by all means, share your less extreme plan for getting people to accept this.

I hope I don't need to point out that this is a hard sell to anyone in the information age.

I'd say you do, actually. Are you familiar with Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions? Because what I'm describing is part of Sowell's "Tragic Vision," which he holds as defining the right, in contrast to the left's "Utopian Vision." And even now, 37 years after that book was published, there are still plenty of people who hold the Tragic Vision.

So, what is your plan?

I don't particularly have one for much of anything cultural or political except "wait for our Augustus." But just because I, personally, don't have a specific plan for accomplishing the triumph of the Tragic Vision over the Utopian Vision, doesn't mean it can't happen.

I'm very confused. Please don't take this the wrong way, maybe I'm misunderstanding your position.

You want people to accept that parts of life are going to suck and will always suck. You want people to put in a leader that will make things suck... less...? Or put in a leader that will make things suck more? Or are you asking for a leader that will make things suck less for you and more for others?

How are you going to get people to accept that things will suck for them forever? When in the information age, it is trivially easy to be bombarded with information about how great things are for some of them? Even monkeys flip their shit when they see another monkey gets grapes.

I mean, you could just go directly to naked use of force, but that doesn't seem to be what you're proposing. Unless you want an Augustus to apply force for you.

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