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Random scribbling here, but, i feel like America has been the idiots wearing the dunce cap ongoingly for a long time. But we're finally seeing some real world

Random scribbling here, but, i feel like America has been the idiots wearing the dunce cap ongoingly for a long time. But we're finally seeing some real world events & consequences across the world that mirror our internal battle of values, seeing what heavily regressed shelted "anti-political" naivety & other declared antipathys & worse maledictions happening on the world stage look like, far & wide. It feels like there's a lot more examples of very ethnocentric, me & us thinking playing out on the world stage. Personally I find it scary but I think this system shock has a distinct potential to help the world reflect, to decide on stronger more pan-human values, in the face of these upswelling raging distinctionalisms. In some ways I do worry, that isolationist & nationalistic programmes may see some sucess. But by & large, I feel that there's some pretty clear moral groundings staking it out, have been for a while, and seeing a lot more cases on the world stage, seeing more consequneces of what exclusivist policymaking really looks like is a painful painful painful lesson, but one that will illuminate & recalibrate us all, will help remind us & scare us our of some of our pervasive & monstrous behaviors. I have some hope we can keep learning & watching, that the parallax view of other countries undergoing the sick battle for it's soul America has suffered & whether that & the law/system is for a very few or for a general public benefit-- I have hope.it carries the world towards caring & concerns. Tbings seem to decidedly be getting harder & worse. I feel like huddling closer has been a natural response, but ultimately has been tinged with cruelty & defeatism, and that we can start to recognize more how weak & scared & isolated responses- when we see them happening elsewhere- look bad, and dont help. I hope we can see the morality & logic of the situation better, seeing more of the world undergoe it's own self-crisis, it's anti-belief in structure & governance & trying, and find remewed vigor to work collectively for better. Just a hope, a small little one, but it feels so new to me to see this struggle playing out more widely.

rektide 5y ago
> We see it in cultural evolution too, as Robert Wright explained in his 1999 book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Wright showed that history involves a series of transitions, driven by rising population density plus new technologies (writing, roads, the printing press) that created new possibilities for mutually beneficial trade and learning. Zero-sum conflicts—such as the wars of religion that arose as the printing press spread heretical ideas across Europe—were better thought of as temporary setbacks, and sometimes even integral to progress. 100% one of my favorite books to have run into as a youth, a great great materialist philosphy book. Feels like a very weirdly reductionist take thought, making mock rather than taking seriously what cooperation enabled. There's scant recognition of what zero sum systems are, of how cooperation moves things out of stagnant points into better. Such a loved text & tbis article starts off paying some respect, but ultimately missing the point so so bad, only starting to re-entertain human possibility.

rektide 5y ago

> We see it in cultural evolution too, as Robert Wright explained in his 1999 book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Wright showed that history involves a series of transitions, driven by rising population density plus new technologies (writing, roads, the printing press) that created new possibilities for mutually beneficial trade and learning. Zero-sum conflicts—such as the wars of religion that arose as the printing press spread heretical ideas across Europe—were better thought of as temporary setbacks, and sometimes even integral to progress. 100% one of my favorite books to have run into as a youth, a great great materialist philosphy book. Feels like a very weirdly reductionist take thought, making mock rather than taking seriously what cooperation enabled. There's scant recognition of what zero sum systems are, of how cooperation moves things out of stagnant points into better. Such a loved text & tbis article starts off paying some respect, but ultimately missing the point so so bad, only starting to re-entertain human possibility.