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I bring up the genocide of the First Nations a lot. Slavery too. The point of the Revolution wasn't that the USA became a utopia instantly, the point is that

I bring up the genocide of the First Nations a lot. Slavery too. The point of the Revolution wasn't that the USA became a utopia instantly, the point is that they threw out the king and then didn't make themselves kings. Establishing and extending freedom and human rights has been and continues to be a slog, a hard-fought and ongoing battle. In re: the original statement, the capitalists didn't take over the government, they started it, and we the (rest of the) people are taking it over from them.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
I’d generally agree here - though frankly I don’t think it’s as notable as the “founders” want it to be that they didn’t immediately declare themselves lords (despite doing that for 100 years prior) I currently live in “Prince William” County. Take that for what you will but it’s not cause lordships weren’t around I don’t think anyone should get points for not behaving like a psychopath
- carapace 2y ago
  Yeah I think we're in general agreement. Cheers. > I don’t think anyone should get points for not behaving like a psychopath Absolutely, but what counts as psychopathy has changed over time. We're getting away from the main thread here, but uh, one of my personal favorite historical ideas is that the modern political concepts of freedom and democracy come from the Iroquois: > Historians in the 20th century have suggested the Iroquois system of government influenced the development of the U.S. government,[293][294] although the extent and nature of this influence has been disputed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Influence_on_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Influence_on_the_Unit... In any event, it seems to me that we are recovering from some trauma in the past (I like the Younger Dryas for this but it doesn't really matter what the disaster was) and most of the psychopathy we see today is the residue of trans-generational PTSD. > “Prince William” County I guessed before checking that that's in Virginia. I haven't read it yet but "Albion's Seed" makes some interesting points (IMO): > Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America is a 1989 book by David Hackett Fischer that details the folkways of four groups of people who moved from distinct regions of Great Britain (Albion) to the United States. The argument is that the culture of each of the groups persisted, to provide the basis for the political culture of the modern United States.[2] Fischer explains "the origins and stability of a social system which for two centuries has remained stubbornly democratic in its politics, capitalist in its economy, libertarian in its laws and individualist in its society and pluralistic in its culture."[3] > The four migrations are discussed in the four main chapters of the book: > ... > The South of England to Virginia - The Cavaliers and Indentured Servants (Gentry influenced the Southern United States' plantation culture)[5] > ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed In Virginia exiled British nobility did their best to carry on with the strict social hierarchy of lords and serfs.
  - AndrewKemendo 2y ago
    All around agreement - though I’d nitpick the degree to which psychopathy was pervasive, accepted, recognized and promoted Namely it seems to be very rare in hunter gatherers and highest in “advanced” economies You can read my theory on the original resource trauma was here: https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html Yd might be causal to the loss of megafauna, but ultimately my claim is that was the loss of megafauna and resulting requirement to change society in the neolithic to domination based agrarianism Riane Eiseler documented most of this in Chalice and the blade
    - carapace 2y ago
      That's a fascinating idea! The original trauma could just be when humanity reached the ecological limits of the Earth and the fundamental nature of life changed from Eden-like simplicity to competition with others for limited food/space. (As an aside, you use "flywheel" as a metaphor for positive feedback loops, please don't do that. Flywheels are batteries not feedback loops. It's a pet peeve of mine, sorry.) It gets a little ranty at the end, which I enjoyed, but you might want to separate out the paper from the rant? In any event the population leveling out is a very good thing, as so many of our other problems stem directly from population pressure. However, don't forget the Amish! They are among the best farmers on the planet, they have huge families, and they don't fight nor do they use computers or high technology. I say it as a joke but there's some truth to it: the Amish are the meek who inherit the Earth. In re: AI, the question of "what is good?" is open-ended, the AI force us to confront this question but AI (no matter how intelligent) cannot answer it for us. (cf. Wendel Berry's essay "What are People For?") In other words, Douglas Adams was right: the Earth and humanity are a computer calculating the answer the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything: "What is good? What are we for? Where shall we have lunch?" In the meantime, I follow Bucky Fuller's ideas of the World Game and Design Science Revolution: apply our technology and resources to meet human needs efficiently without "disadvantaging anyone" and nobody has to get nailed to anything. Politics is group therapy. Since there's enough to go around we don't have to fight each other anymore, we just have to flip back to the community and sharing mode from the competition and hoarding mode, which should be easy as the former is much more fun and fulfilling than the latter, eh? Graeber and Wengrow in "The Dawn of Everything" quote at length a letter from Ben Franklin: > When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them there is no persuading him ever to return, and that this is not natural merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was to be brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness. This was a Wilderness that had hosted large cities and civilizations that were swept away by diseases brought by the Spanish a few centuries earlier. ("1491" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/30... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A... ) After the destruction of N. Am civilizations by plague things might have perhaps been a little bit like the old times before the Quaternary Megafauna Extinction, at least for a couple of centuries before the next wave of Europeans arrived. Anyway, politics is group therapy: we can help people heal from the mal-adaptive mode to normal kindly mode with any of a number of therapies, provided of course that their other needs are satisfied (meaning the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy. There has to be a context of safety and abundance to for community and sharing to be rational, eh?)

AndrewKemendo 2y ago

I’d generally agree here - though frankly I don’t think it’s as notable as the “founders” want it to be that they didn’t immediately declare themselves lords (despite doing that for 100 years prior) I currently live in “Prince William” County. Take that for what you will but it’s not cause lordships weren’t around I don’t think anyone should get points for not behaving like a psychopath

carapace 2y ago
Yeah I think we're in general agreement. Cheers. > I don’t think anyone should get points for not behaving like a psychopath Absolutely, but what counts as psychopathy has changed over time. We're getting away from the main thread here, but uh, one of my personal favorite historical ideas is that the modern political concepts of freedom and democracy come from the Iroquois: > Historians in the 20th century have suggested the Iroquois system of government influenced the development of the U.S. government,[293][294] although the extent and nature of this influence has been disputed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Influence_on_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois#Influence_on_the_Unit... In any event, it seems to me that we are recovering from some trauma in the past (I like the Younger Dryas for this but it doesn't really matter what the disaster was) and most of the psychopathy we see today is the residue of trans-generational PTSD. > “Prince William” County I guessed before checking that that's in Virginia. I haven't read it yet but "Albion's Seed" makes some interesting points (IMO): > Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America is a 1989 book by David Hackett Fischer that details the folkways of four groups of people who moved from distinct regions of Great Britain (Albion) to the United States. The argument is that the culture of each of the groups persisted, to provide the basis for the political culture of the modern United States.[2] Fischer explains "the origins and stability of a social system which for two centuries has remained stubbornly democratic in its politics, capitalist in its economy, libertarian in its laws and individualist in its society and pluralistic in its culture."[3] > The four migrations are discussed in the four main chapters of the book: > ... > The South of England to Virginia - The Cavaliers and Indentured Servants (Gentry influenced the Southern United States' plantation culture)[5] > ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed In Virginia exiled British nobility did their best to carry on with the strict social hierarchy of lords and serfs.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  All around agreement - though I’d nitpick the degree to which psychopathy was pervasive, accepted, recognized and promoted Namely it seems to be very rare in hunter gatherers and highest in “advanced” economies You can read my theory on the original resource trauma was here: https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html Yd might be causal to the loss of megafauna, but ultimately my claim is that was the loss of megafauna and resulting requirement to change society in the neolithic to domination based agrarianism Riane Eiseler documented most of this in Chalice and the blade
  - carapace 2y ago
    That's a fascinating idea! The original trauma could just be when humanity reached the ecological limits of the Earth and the fundamental nature of life changed from Eden-like simplicity to competition with others for limited food/space. (As an aside, you use "flywheel" as a metaphor for positive feedback loops, please don't do that. Flywheels are batteries not feedback loops. It's a pet peeve of mine, sorry.) It gets a little ranty at the end, which I enjoyed, but you might want to separate out the paper from the rant? In any event the population leveling out is a very good thing, as so many of our other problems stem directly from population pressure. However, don't forget the Amish! They are among the best farmers on the planet, they have huge families, and they don't fight nor do they use computers or high technology. I say it as a joke but there's some truth to it: the Amish are the meek who inherit the Earth. In re: AI, the question of "what is good?" is open-ended, the AI force us to confront this question but AI (no matter how intelligent) cannot answer it for us. (cf. Wendel Berry's essay "What are People For?") In other words, Douglas Adams was right: the Earth and humanity are a computer calculating the answer the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything: "What is good? What are we for? Where shall we have lunch?" In the meantime, I follow Bucky Fuller's ideas of the World Game and Design Science Revolution: apply our technology and resources to meet human needs efficiently without "disadvantaging anyone" and nobody has to get nailed to anything. Politics is group therapy. Since there's enough to go around we don't have to fight each other anymore, we just have to flip back to the community and sharing mode from the competition and hoarding mode, which should be easy as the former is much more fun and fulfilling than the latter, eh? Graeber and Wengrow in "The Dawn of Everything" quote at length a letter from Ben Franklin: > When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them there is no persuading him ever to return, and that this is not natural merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. One instance I remember to have heard, where the person was to be brought home to possess a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun and match-Coat, with which he took his way again to the Wilderness. This was a Wilderness that had hosted large cities and civilizations that were swept away by diseases brought by the Spanish a few centuries earlier. ("1491" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/30... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A... ) After the destruction of N. Am civilizations by plague things might have perhaps been a little bit like the old times before the Quaternary Megafauna Extinction, at least for a couple of centuries before the next wave of Europeans arrived. Anyway, politics is group therapy: we can help people heal from the mal-adaptive mode to normal kindly mode with any of a number of therapies, provided of course that their other needs are satisfied (meaning the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy. There has to be a context of safety and abundance to for community and sharing to be rational, eh?)