16 ms·

I think, the social mechanics of this process is very simple. Ability to tell others what to do is called power. Some people are more power-hungry than others,

I think, the social mechanics of this process is very simple. Ability to tell others what to do is called power. Some people are more power-hungry than others, so they seek ways to assert themselves over others. That's a perfectly normal human thing to do. What matters is the way you would achieve power in a society. Getting power through building up your name as a notable researcher or author is one thing. Playing favor games with others in power is another one. In stable societies the power ladder is at least partially correlated with creating added value. Getting people to buy your product, getting people to elect you into office, even helping out your friends so one day they will help you haul that fridge upstairs. They also have some checks and countermeasures, like the universally trusted independent judicial system, that somewhat impedes attempts to break this correlation. Except now it's breaking apart. Now we have a growing socioeconomic group that wields increasing power over what others can say by just claiming that they are fighting for a good cause. As long as you are anti-$BUZZWORD and have a sufficient network of followers, nobody dares to oppose you and nobody will protect those who dare. It's not really about what is in the book or what pronouns someone uses. It's about the fact that a power-hungry person can have the pleasure of telling 1000 other people what to say, and financially obliterate those who don't comply. And no, there won't be a happy blissful day at the end of the road when we have finally eradicated all friction points and everybody can go have a beer together. The power-seekers won't self-disband. They will keep finding a target after target because that's where they get their kicks from. Entire fucking history of USSR is littered with different power-hungry people using noble goals to chop their competitors' heads off. It didn't end well for them and it didn't end well for the country. I'm happy we are not at the head-chopping stage yet, but I keep wondering how long do we have left...

KirillPanov 6y ago
> a power-hungry person can have the pleasure of telling 1000 other people what to say, and financially obliterate those who don't comply > Some people are more power-hungry than others True. Also, some people are more violent than others, but we try to keep those away from the rest of the population and gradually titrate them out of the gene pool. I would love to live in a society that treated insatiable thirst for power the same way.
- kleer001 6y ago
  > gradually titrate them out of the gene pool. Where do you see that happening?
  - KirillPanov 6y ago
    It's pretty damn hard to reproduce when you're in prison.
    - kleer001 6y ago
      Conjugal visits. Reproduce before going to prison. Reproduce after prison. Reproduce while on parole. I have a cousin in Los Angeles with three kids (last I heard about a decade ago) and he's in and out of prison all the time. I'm just having my first. Idiocracy wasn't too off the mark. One particular strength of male humans is their long reproductive years. There are many cases of 80 and 90 year old men reproducing. ttps://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/bjs/vospats.pdf > Based on admissions data for 1992 to 1994, violent State prisoners had an average sentence of about 10 years and were expected to serve slightly less than 5 years on average. That's nearly zero impact on a man's reproductive life.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- john_moscow 6y ago
  In reality, if you try doing that, the movement will get spearheaded by a small group of cronies that will use it as an excuse to get rid of competition. I bet you can't be very power-hungry in North Korea unless you are a part of the ruling family.
  - KirillPanov 6y ago
    Perhaps. Before civilization, it used to be that the most violent person in the group could simply take whatever they wanted. At some point we managed to "civilize violence" by creating a special caste -- police officers -- whose career is the use of violence in a controlled way, to prevent the violent from having whatever they want. Although the police abuse this "violence license" they haven't managed to subvert it into supreme dictatorial power. The fact that almost everybody knows what the phrase "police state" means, and that it's a bad thing, is probably part of this. I imagine there is some similar recursive trick with power-thirst, getting the political schemers to spend their lives chasing each other instead of the rest of us, the way the DEA spend their lives chasing drug lords but never make any real progress. Note that the drug lords are generally pretty happy that the DEA exist, or else their trade would not be nearly so lucrative. And the DEA are happy that the drug lords exist, or else they'd be out of a job. It might take us a few more millenia to acquire the vocabulary needed to describe the recursive trick, let alone discover it.
kleer001 6y ago
> Entire fucking history of USSR is littered with different power-hungry people using noble goals to chop their competitors' heads off. Which is where I'm pretty sure the memetic tools came from to capture and wield this power over people. Where exactly? Marxism. Not it in and of its self, but along with the French Post structuralists a universal solvent of philosophy has been weaponized and let loose (and encouraged to grow) in North America... and sadly seeded to the rest of the world. To me this looks like the end game of a small but clever team of cold war era Soviets. 1970's USA was in no way prepared to fight an idea war. Though the country that launched it is no more, the fall out will, I fear, kill us all. How? These power game playing people will continue to ascend until they get to the top. Then, there, they will implement absurdist anti-sense anti-science policy. When? Two more generations tops. Let's say 2060, that's a nice round number, and we'll see wide spread famine and a new kind of gulag in North America. But that's worst case scenario. Maybe it'll all fade away? I hope so. Previous washes of political correctness have come and gone. And, like I love to tell myself, from Obama's lips 'Reality has a way of asserting itself'. And these bizarre, predictable power games are tethered from reality.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  >Maybe it'll all fade away? I hope so. Previous washes of political correctness have come and gone. This wave has very strong economic foundation. Remember we used to laugh 10 years ago about those people taking $30K loans to study for basket weaving degrees? Well, it got worse. This generation took $50K loans to study social justice degrees. And these degrees taught them that the real source of problems are not the colleges that sold them the worthless degrees. Not the corporations that outsourced the production jobs they would have otherwise taken. Not the interest rates and pro-corporate policies that made many small businesses unsustainable. No, they think it's their neighbor who studied 10x harder to get a STEM degree and occupy one of the last remaining spots in the economy that pays well. And now this neighbor is a privileged $BUZZWORD supremacist who dares to have kids and wants to put them into a good school and hence must be dealt with. And they will "deal" with them. Or, rather, us. Because burning witches and heretics had been a popular entertainment for centuries and the factors that held it back since the Enlightenment age are fading away very fast.
- 6y ago
snvzz 6y ago
It always is the Cruel Moraliser[0]. [0]: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-to-disguise-his-horns https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-t...
yerwhat01010 6y ago
One of the authors of the "academic" papers which sparked this cancellation is on the board of a nonprofit that makes political children's books. The point is "Aufheben der Kultur" - the abolition of culture. They attack Seuss because he's a beloved children's icon and a common cultural reference point we love and share. The point is to permanently taint him so we no longer have that reference point, detaching us from our shared culture so that these ideologues can shoehorn in some garbage woke propaganda to children at the youngest age possible. Make no mistake: Dr Seuss won't be the last icon they come for.
- __jem 6y ago
  What is this random use of German? In any case, an Aufhebung has strong philosophical connotation that implies the process of synthesis -- so you're in luck, negation never fully destroys the thing it negates, it simply supersedes it.
woko 6y ago
I would add that "politics" is all about seizing and exerting power over other people's lives. And a small minority of people can seize the power if they are smart enough, even in a democracy, because the majority of people are apathetic with respect to politics and do not envision the stakes, so it is possible to win them over through propaganda and misinformation.

KirillPanov 6y ago

> a power-hungry person can have the pleasure of telling 1000 other people what to say, and financially obliterate those who don't comply > Some people are more power-hungry than others True. Also, some people are more violent than others, but we try to keep those away from the rest of the population and gradually titrate them out of the gene pool. I would love to live in a society that treated insatiable thirst for power the same way.

kleer001 6y ago
> gradually titrate them out of the gene pool. Where do you see that happening?
- KirillPanov 6y ago
  It's pretty damn hard to reproduce when you're in prison.
  - kleer001 6y ago
    Conjugal visits. Reproduce before going to prison. Reproduce after prison. Reproduce while on parole. I have a cousin in Los Angeles with three kids (last I heard about a decade ago) and he's in and out of prison all the time. I'm just having my first. Idiocracy wasn't too off the mark. One particular strength of male humans is their long reproductive years. There are many cases of 80 and 90 year old men reproducing. ttps://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/bjs/vospats.pdf > Based on admissions data for 1992 to 1994, violent State prisoners had an average sentence of about 10 years and were expected to serve slightly less than 5 years on average. That's nearly zero impact on a man's reproductive life.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
john_moscow 6y ago
In reality, if you try doing that, the movement will get spearheaded by a small group of cronies that will use it as an excuse to get rid of competition. I bet you can't be very power-hungry in North Korea unless you are a part of the ruling family.
- KirillPanov 6y ago
  Perhaps. Before civilization, it used to be that the most violent person in the group could simply take whatever they wanted. At some point we managed to "civilize violence" by creating a special caste -- police officers -- whose career is the use of violence in a controlled way, to prevent the violent from having whatever they want. Although the police abuse this "violence license" they haven't managed to subvert it into supreme dictatorial power. The fact that almost everybody knows what the phrase "police state" means, and that it's a bad thing, is probably part of this. I imagine there is some similar recursive trick with power-thirst, getting the political schemers to spend their lives chasing each other instead of the rest of us, the way the DEA spend their lives chasing drug lords but never make any real progress. Note that the drug lords are generally pretty happy that the DEA exist, or else their trade would not be nearly so lucrative. And the DEA are happy that the drug lords exist, or else they'd be out of a job. It might take us a few more millenia to acquire the vocabulary needed to describe the recursive trick, let alone discover it.

kleer001 6y ago

> Entire fucking history of USSR is littered with different power-hungry people using noble goals to chop their competitors' heads off. Which is where I'm pretty sure the memetic tools came from to capture and wield this power over people. Where exactly? Marxism. Not it in and of its self, but along with the French Post structuralists a universal solvent of philosophy has been weaponized and let loose (and encouraged to grow) in North America... and sadly seeded to the rest of the world. To me this looks like the end game of a small but clever team of cold war era Soviets. 1970's USA was in no way prepared to fight an idea war. Though the country that launched it is no more, the fall out will, I fear, kill us all. How? These power game playing people will continue to ascend until they get to the top. Then, there, they will implement absurdist anti-sense anti-science policy. When? Two more generations tops. Let's say 2060, that's a nice round number, and we'll see wide spread famine and a new kind of gulag in North America. But that's worst case scenario. Maybe it'll all fade away? I hope so. Previous washes of political correctness have come and gone. And, like I love to tell myself, from Obama's lips 'Reality has a way of asserting itself'. And these bizarre, predictable power games are tethered from reality.

john_moscow 6y ago
>Maybe it'll all fade away? I hope so. Previous washes of political correctness have come and gone. This wave has very strong economic foundation. Remember we used to laugh 10 years ago about those people taking $30K loans to study for basket weaving degrees? Well, it got worse. This generation took $50K loans to study social justice degrees. And these degrees taught them that the real source of problems are not the colleges that sold them the worthless degrees. Not the corporations that outsourced the production jobs they would have otherwise taken. Not the interest rates and pro-corporate policies that made many small businesses unsustainable. No, they think it's their neighbor who studied 10x harder to get a STEM degree and occupy one of the last remaining spots in the economy that pays well. And now this neighbor is a privileged $BUZZWORD supremacist who dares to have kids and wants to put them into a good school and hence must be dealt with. And they will "deal" with them. Or, rather, us. Because burning witches and heretics had been a popular entertainment for centuries and the factors that held it back since the Enlightenment age are fading away very fast.
6y ago

snvzz 6y ago

It always is the Cruel Moraliser[0]. [0]: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-to-disguise-his-horns https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-t...

yerwhat01010 6y ago

One of the authors of the "academic" papers which sparked this cancellation is on the board of a nonprofit that makes political children's books. The point is "Aufheben der Kultur" - the abolition of culture. They attack Seuss because he's a beloved children's icon and a common cultural reference point we love and share. The point is to permanently taint him so we no longer have that reference point, detaching us from our shared culture so that these ideologues can shoehorn in some garbage woke propaganda to children at the youngest age possible. Make no mistake: Dr Seuss won't be the last icon they come for.

__jem 6y ago
What is this random use of German? In any case, an Aufhebung has strong philosophical connotation that implies the process of synthesis -- so you're in luck, negation never fully destroys the thing it negates, it simply supersedes it.

woko 6y ago

I would add that "politics" is all about seizing and exerting power over other people's lives. And a small minority of people can seize the power if they are smart enough, even in a democracy, because the majority of people are apathetic with respect to politics and do not envision the stakes, so it is possible to win them over through propaganda and misinformation.