Yeah, I’m not sure if I gave this guy a fair shake. But I think too many of his ideas don’t have very dynamic solutions. When he says the reason we have a cul

Yeah, I’m not sure if I gave this guy a fair shake. But I think too many of his ideas don’t have very dynamic solutions. When he says the reason we have a culture war is because we don’t have a culture —- he seems to strongly discount the idea that fundamentally the “machine” is just pluralism, the fact that we all disagree with each other. Like I do feel the emotional salience of his idea of the machine, and that’s his goal, but also if I stop to think about it, I realize there are people in this world who really like AI and progress, it’s not just mindless. And so if the culture war is about gay marriage - I’m not sure how to interpret his solution as anything other than thought policing - if we can enforce the idea that our culture denies (or accepts) gay marriage then we’ll have a culture. He does seem to honestly struggle with these ideas, and criticisms of his earlier books suggest he does have an individualist approach as the solution (which I would support). But on the flip side, I loosely speaking agree with his four p’s but there’s an implication made that Buddhism and Wicca don’t fall under the definition of prayer, but orthodox Christianity does? So maybe he doesn’t want a white Christian theocracy (he specifically says this isn’t he solution) but it sounds like his solution rhymes with that? But these issues are complicated and I struggle with them as well. I don’t think people deal well with too much freedom, but then of course how do we deal with the fact that my definition of too much freedom differs from yours? Having different communities is a big part of the answer. I can choose to live in a different city than you. Have a different religion than you. But again, if his argument is we have a culture war because we don’t have a culture, it sounds like he wants to assert some level of uniformity on what I’m allowed to do in my city, and that I cannot abide. But then again, I would also say that —- loosely speaking, it’s probably true that most of our cultural moral guidance should center around fairly simple, what could be described as conservative ideas. Community, hard work, family(I don’t care who you love, but marriage and family probably is a stabilizing force). People would probably be happier if they focused on these basics(if you’re weird and want to have a weird life go for it! But I do think there’s an extent to which our society teaches us you should _want_ a weird life (think different!) but really, if you don’t know what you want, don’t go find yourself, try hard work, family, community)