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Speaking only for myself: yes. I'll take the Taliban over the current batch of western elites.
I am very skeptical that you're actually serious. This is the sort of edgy "Well, I guess I'm on Team Sauron then" take that young people use to express their disgust with The Man. The reality is that you have a pretty good life under the Western elites, however much their policies and hypocrisy might disgust you, which you would not have under the Taliban.
"Well, they'd forcibly convert me to Islam, forbid me all Western decadences, my wife and daughters would have to stay inside for the rest of their lives or risk beatings or worse, and the economy under their management would almost certain drop below third world levels, but at least I wouldn't have to call anyone by their preferred pronouns!"
If you actually are serious, you either know very little about the actual Taliban, or you have become so blackpilled by the culture war that you've become the sort of person who will blow himself up to spite your neighbor.
You just tried to roast me for being too slow to see how terrible wokes would become once put in charge. It's hard to take seriously an assertion that the Taliban would be less bad.
Both of these are somewhat accurate, though only to a minor wxtent, and they're not the reasons for me holding this opinion. Though you'll probably see the actual reason as no less insane. It's not that I believe the Taliban are cool, or that I think the current state we're in is worse than Afghanistan, it's that I believe our elites actually, no shit, have a plan to abolish humanity, at least in any form I would recognize it. We've been talking about various slippery slopes, but what we've discussed is nothing compared to what's coming, and the sudden promotion of things like surrogacy and euthanasia offer a glimpse into it. Even trans issue, as controversial as they've been, are only the thin end of the wedge for transhumanism.
It's all far off into the future, so I understand anyone thinking things aren't quite so bad yet, but it seems pretty clear to me this is where they want to push us.
could you please be more specific? You say that transsexuality is associated with transhumanism?
Yeah, the way I see it transsexuality is straight-forwardly a form transhumanism - you don't like the limits imposed on you by nature so you start hacking away at them until you get something you like. My point is that this idea won't stop at the normalization of transexuality. Once changing to the other sex becomes accepted, why not start pushing for the acceptance of becoming both or neither? From there it's not long until people start asking what's the point of keeping the human form at all, the goal is to have everything customizable like you're a character in an RPG. This isn't just my interpretation or extrapolation of my opponents' position, this idea is written down in manifestoes and has open advocates, including on this forum.
If you're tempted to say this is not representative of the modal transgender person, that does not matter. I fundamentally reject the democratic framework of analyzing ideas and movements. Democratic majorities only provide inertia, but ideas are driven by influential individuals and small groups.
Including... on this forum... hmm...
Wait...
Did you just say there's a clinic in Austin Texas that can give me a vagina without removing my penis? AWESOME!
Lumen! Add that to the TODO!
I kid I kid. Naturally I already knew about the existence and limitations of current gen phallus-preserving vaginoplasty tech.
Anyway. In terms of manifestos, you really have to throw the Xenofeminist Manifesto on the list!
P.S. If you've ever seen Lumen choose that name before... Nice.
I was debating whether I should tag you or not, but I tend to err on the side of not bothering people. But since you're here, I did want to mention that even though we're probably couldn't be further away philsophically, I really enjoyed the conversations we had so far.
Linking to that old thread, I also realized I never got back to you, and was thinking of resurrecting that topic and going into details about my issues with the transhumanist approach of keeping the good bits of humanity, and discarding the rest.
Ah, yes. I am interested in those details. I do have my own reservations with discarding bits of humanity carelessly. I think there's value even, in having cultures of low tech humans.
But I believe you have more core reservations than just pragmatic concerns regarding safe exploration. When trying to relate... https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/specialization comes to mind.
But even here, I expect this world looks primarily dystopian to you, whereas to me, its a mix of dystopian and exciting. The parts of this comic where efficiency is crushing the humanity out of people distress me, but the parts where the weird individuals in the comic choose to embrace something new and alien excite me. So... my life's work tends towards struggling to thread the needle in such a way as to somehow resolve this conflict between... Art and Efficiency.
And as for not pinging me- It may be for the best. I try not to come to TheMotte too often. Its good to experience the perspectives here but there are diminishing returns and- I have a bit of an addictive personality. The easiest way for me to regulate my usage is just to block the site for weeks at a time. Which is to say it would have taken me a while to get back to you anyway.
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I think the difference is that most transhumanism is grounded in reality in the present, even if it is utopian about the future. It may claim we'll be able to make ourselves into cyborgs or Gods, but in general it doesn't say we're there yet. Transsexuality claims we either can become or (in its pure modern form) actually ARE a member of a different sex, today.
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I believe the current transgender advocacy, on the reverse, requires trans individuals to be recognized as such even without surgery and/or HRT, Laws requiring surgery and/or HRT, sterliziation are widely seen as transphobic.
I don't think this has anything to do with mainstream.
It does both, denying blockers, hormones and surgeries to people too young to have the wisdom to make irreversible decisions is also seen as transphobic. It aims to abolish social categories as well as physical limits.
10 years ago the current trans movement had nothing to do with the mainstream.
Ok, lobbying for unrestricted (or barely restricted) usage of blockers and hormones by youth can be seen as libertarian and transhumanist. But others? The same people push for obligatory pronouns and orwellian phrase "gender affirmative therapy" referring to transition. They make to fight for trans represenation. If I implant a multispectral camera in my body so I could enhance my vision, there people would be amongst the first for me to be punished.
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I would like to believe the blue elites were as based as you're painting them, and pushed for a true shedding of human limits rather than breeding a kind of docile homo podlivingus.
The classic* elite desire is to split into two races, one shedding human limits and the other a docile homo servus to serve the former.
* See e.g. Sterling (1988)
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Okay, well, I am not going to try to talk you out of this kind of irrational doomerism. I'll just point out that in the vastly unlikely event of the Taliban or their equivalent actually taking over the world, I cannot imagine their end game being any less bad than whatever bug-eating transhumanist dystopia you imagine the "western elites" are going to inflict on us.
I don't know if I'd want them to take over the world either, but on the bright side, I don't think their philosophy is particularly conducive to that. By contrast, I think transhumanist techno-surveillance states are totalizing by nature.
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Interesting you say that, because I as an actual practicing muslim (and coethnic) would far rather have the current batch of western elites over the literal Taliban ruling the place.
Sharia law really isn't something you want in the modern world. The prohibitions on interest alone would destroy the economy far worse than what current elites are doing by not listening to economists/giving in to populists.
I think that if sharia were to come anyways it wouldn’t be accompanied by non-collapse in any case, I’m sure that the other person who wants shariah over the current ruling of Western elites would also be fine with a collapse in order to destroy the currently crafted elite-order; you wouldn’t want to defeat the elites and then swap out them with another set of elites with beards while keeping everything else in place.
Most interestingly the first actual imposition of shariah on the world from the 7th century onward was seen by Christians and Jews as an instance of collapse for the greater good: God was punishing them for their decadence and heresies. The Jews thought that God was rewarding them and relinquishing their punishment from under the Christians, only for the Muslims to subsequently punish the Jews again and prevent the one thing they really wanted (building the third temple) by building the dome of the rock. The Christians thought this was variably punishment for having so many schisms or having icons or whatever. In any case everyone was basically expecting the world to end in the 7th century anyways (in fact even the Muslims did, they thought that Jesus was going to come back after they took Jerusalem), and the Muhammadan caliphate was just another extension of this apocalyptic hope. Everyone was yearning for ultimate collapse, which didn’t actually happen, only regional collapse did.
We might be seeing this yearning for ultimate collapse once again come about, hence why everyone (e.g Catgirl Kulak) seems to be saying that ‘in a couple of decades the entire economy will collapse!’ at best or ‘everyone on earth will fall dead in the same second’ at worst (e.g AI doomers). The hope for shariah is probably just another element of that Western death-drive.
All great civilisations have a death drive. Consider the fin de siècle or Edwardian obsession with the occult, or the proliferation of millenarian new age movements at the height of postwar American dominance.
Or more specifically, all great civilizations have a drive for the end of history, which would inevitably lead to the death of change and the resurrection of a perennial age from the ashes (which means that everything has to burn down first). A typical Marxist would say that the American and French revolutions were extensions of this in terms of being ‘revolutions of the bourgeoisie’, which ironically wasn’t the ending of history, but the starting of an entirely new era (the one of the subjugation of the proletariat in capitalism), but every new cycle thinks it’s the last.
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What can I say? All things considered they're a bit strict for my taste, but they do what they say on the tin, which I tend to consider strictly superior to the vague and fluent rules of the west. The way of life they want to impose might not quite be my of tea either, but I recognize it as humane, while the western seems to aim for abolishing humanity.
They do what they say on the tin, meaning rule over an unproductive peasant economy that is one of the poorest nations in the world? No, it is clear modernity is still better than the Taliban if the goal of organized human society is some kind of technological or industrial advancement.
And the Taliban haven’t even been able to stop ISIS terror attacks, which continue regularly under their authority. The first duty of any state is to order; the Taliban cannot even accomplish this. You may wish to be ruled over by illiterate, destructive tribesmen descended from Buddhists converted by Arab conquerors in the distant past. That opinion may not be widely shared in the West, though.
I don't know how much clearer I can make it that they're not my first choice, but if western elites expect me to fight for them in any conflict with radical Muslims, they're in for a surprise. If they don't like that, maybe they shouldn't have imported so many of them back when people like me were saying it might not be a great idea.
Isn't that cutting your own nose off to spite your face? Your opponents finally come around to your position, to the extent they are now willing to violently oppose the Islamic people/world you also dislike and wanted to keep out, which was one of the key disputes you had with them...
And you switch sides to side with the people you were against in the first place?
Why would you expect to be taken seriously? I hate that you won't go along with my position so much, that I would side with the people that we had opposing views on? That seems like simple spite. At which point despite being correct you can't be taken seriously in any kind of political coalition. If you don't get your own way, you side with the people you were against?
Setting aside any moral issues, pragmatically there is no reason for your opponents to ever consider your ideas. If you hate them when they disagree, and hate them when they agree, then you aren't leaving much space for change, even when you are actually right.
For one, they haven't actually come around, they're still importing them wholesale.
Right back at you. I don't believe the only reason we have all this promotion of "diversity" is to foment conflict in society. The fact that the progressive elites are siding with the Muslims (for example) right up until the point I decide I won't fight them in progressives' name, is proof positive I was being taken for a ride. It's your fight now, have fun.
Sure, if they don't change their mind then that makes sense. But this is predicated on them doing so.
That said I understand now I think. I'd suggest the elites wouldn't be changing their minds BECAUSE you decided you won't fight the Muslims. In fact, given I have worked with what might be called the elite in the UK, I can almost guarantee they aren't thinking about you (and your peers) at all, or that they are trying to take you for a ride at all, because they don't think about people like you or me much at all. (Which to be clear is a big problem, hence why I quit politics, its just not the same problem you think there is).
As for me, I don't think it will come to a fight at all. At least due to internal Muslims. I have extensive experience with Pakistani communities in the UK and they are being "corrupted" by western secular values quite substantially.
To be clear Islam is in my opinion a terrible religion and globally a much bigger problem than Christianity. But I expect it to lose power as its main countries advance and modernize. Reducing birth rates even in Islamic countries show it is not immune. To me the West is clearly the strong horse here. You can bribe native Pakistani and Afghani muslims with Man Utd strips. We've won so hard a tiny Westernised nation can essentially hold off the whole of the Middle East on its own.
Islam is dying. Just as Christianity is. Sunnis and Shi'ites in fight, Pakistan has problems with the Taliban. They are not united.
it makes sense that they do not think about people they do not consider significant.
curious. what they are thinking about?
Birth rates are reduced in Islamic countries, but birth rates of Muslims in countries where they are not a majority are high.
If the nation put this as a goal, maybe.
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I don’t have an opinion on the future of Islam, but the end of this paragraph seems to contradict the beginning. Islam is disunited precisely because it isn’t dead. The Shiites and Sunnis, and ISIS and the Taliban, all care so deeply about their religion and about the proper interpretation of it, that they are willing to physically fight and die for it. Citing that as evidence that Islam is dying is like citing the Thirty Years’ War as evidence that Christianity was dying 400 years ago.
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Only someone who has never experienced the direct influence of the Taliban would think that way. The Taliban are like fire, they make good servants but bad masters (in the sense that they keep the overton window open for moderate Islam by taking all the attacks which would have come upon moderate Islam otherwise). Putting them incharge of other human beings or in general handing them any power at all ends badly (see how they commit terror attacks when handed power etc., they're even planning on bringing back stoning for adultery!). They work best as zoo specimens, not wild animals.
I remember talking to someone from Pakistan about life in a part of that country where the Taliban were active. He was threatened by armed men on the train because of a little Western apparel. He also once saw a dead man in the street, but just ran away, in order to not instigate a feud between the dead man's family and his own. Presumably the dead man stayed on the street and fed the flies, until someone from his family found his rotting corpse.
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You haven't really said much about what bothers you about their way of life, and the way you talk about them seems more like a point in their favor than anything else.
I admit to not keeping up with Afghanistan, I mostly associated terror attacks with ISIS than the Taliban...
What are you waiting for? The Taliban state has been founded. Move to Afghanistan today, while you still see things clearly.
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I like the people close to me having basic freedoms like my wife not needing to wear a niqab. I like being able to argue using reason and being able to counter "The good book says X, therefore you are wrong when you claim not X" without being denounced as a heretic. I like being clean shaven (yes, the Taliban imposed a beard requirement on all men the last time they were in power), I enjoy dancing and music etc. etc.
I can go on and on...
Oh boy, if you don't like me you really won't like the Taliban. When I say they are my coethnics I don't just mean they have the same skin colour as me/come from the same part of the world, I mean that I, like a very large portion of them, am Pashtun (complete with tribal affiliation and all that). The values they grew up with are the same as those my parents instilled in me as a child and from where I derive my belief system today, except that I've become extremely westernised (people call me a coconut back home - brown on the outside, white on the inside - and I can't really say they are wrong). I'm like the grown up version of Kamal's son from Kipling's Ballad of East and West after the British system has completely laundered him.
Think me but fundamentalist Muslim when you think of the Taliban and then reconsider whether you want someone like that to rule over you.
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