aurum

1) The democrats focused plenty on economics 2) Identity politics IS the heart of progressivism! To be a progressive essentially just means you care about marginalized, oppressed groups and making things more equal for everyone. That’s it. To do that, you necessarily divide people into different identity groups based on relative oppression. 99% of the complaining about identity politics is just people who can’t handle the progressive value system. Ironically, you yourself are not appreciating what progressivism means when you say you should not focus on IP and just do economic populism. There is no economic populism without IP. It’s like you want progressivism without all the things that actually make progressives. So the fact that people can’t handle IP is exactly the reason it’s incorrect that the dems needing to push even further left. He was still plenty centrist. And that should give you a clue about how unfeasible being a progressive is. Consider the reason that leftists end up pivoting center at some point is because that’s what is feasible.

My dude, this whole election was a backlash to Stage Green, progressive values gaining too much ground. The idea that pushing harder into Green progressivism would have been better is absurd. Democrats don't campaign on progressivism because progressivism IS NOT popular or often even feasible. She would have fell in the polls anyway. Don't blame it Liz Cheney. I agree they may have pushed that angle too much, but the idea that Liz Cheney was her downfall is equally absurd.

That assumes: 1) People care enough to educate themselves about the proposals 2) People are developed enough to see the value of the proposals 3) People are ready to embrace economic egalitarianism 4) People vote on policy 5) People are willing to look beyond culture war issues 6) People care about what's true This is nonsense. Tim Walz was basically Minnesota Bernie Sanders. If people wanted progressives so badly, they could have voted him in. Maybe he would have been president at some point. And to the degree that the system is rigged towards the center, that's because most people resonate with the center. Yes, it's a collective paradigm lock. But that collective paradigm lock shows you what people are actually interested in. Of course, this could theoretically change in the future. Things are paradigm locked until they aren't, and then things change. Maybe we will have some sort of backlash to Trump and vote in a far leftist. But I won't be holding my breath for progressives to be dominating elections any time soon.

How are they going to vote progressive with any sort of consistency when they are not progressive? This is a fantasy. You can make whatever excuses you want. At the end of the day, if progressivism were popular, they would be winning. That’s the bottom line that progressives refuse to accept.

To a degree. It's easy to agree with some populist, progressive ideas when you feel like you're being screwed. That doesn't make people progressive. Cornell West. Hard to lose an election when you're so unpopular you aren't even invited to participate. The only baseless speculation is that a serious progressives is what people want. Centrists win all the time. Centrists have proof of concept, progressives do not. I'm not saying it's impossible. But overall, this narrative that Kamala made a grave mistake by also trying to appeal to the center is dead wrong.

That means nothing.

Better than if they had been progressives.

Your boy RFK teamed up with Trump, king of using wokeism as a diversion tactic.

The psychology of traps. They baited her with a loving boyfriend and money. People will fall for it because they seek survival advantage.

This does not mean people are now Stage Green. Or that they have a principled position against corruption / exploitation. People just get angry when bad stuff happens to them.

Really nice list. AI continues to impress me.

So a guy who lives alone?

It's been reversed: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/12/03/asia/south-korea-martial-law-intl

Of course. The problem is that Trump and his goons essentially have no interest in doing an honest analysis of what would be best in terms of government size or market efficiency. They don't care about that. What they care about is mainly what will serve their own interests and their donors.

Neither. It’s likely just Bernie just calling out the hypocrisy of right-wingers on this issue. The right-wing talks so much about government waste and inefficiency, so why don’t we start with the military budget? Crickets. They have no interest in that because fundamentally the right-wing just cares more about the low-level dangers of survival and nationalism. Ideology consistency doesn’t matter, ideology is just a backwards rationalization to meet their survival needs. Honestly, that some leftists don’t understand this makes them somewhat naive. Calling them out on their hypocrisy does essentially nothing when they never cared about ideological consistency in the first place. The budget for the military will not be cut because it’s good for American survival. Leftists need to get this. Overtime we can work towards winding down American hegemony, corruption in politics and higher development, but this is a tall order. And right now we will spending the next couple of years just reducing the backslide into full authoritarian rule and even greater levels of corruption.

Actually it makes perfect sense. A person who habitually scams others will be a person with low development / consciousness. But people of low development are also usually the easiest to manipulate. So it goes both ways.

This movement has no real political influence though. The only ideology most conservatives have any interest in is neoconservatism.

The purpose of spiral wizardry is to meet people where they are at, developmentally speaking. Your group is likely not a bunch of Green progressives that need to be educated on the limitations of Green. They will just use whatever you say to reinforce their dislike for Green. So no, you would be doing the opposite of spiral wizardry. If you're just doing an hour call, I'd say your best bet is just to give a broad overview of the model. Here are all the stages, here are the pros and cons of all of them, and here is how someone transitions from each stage. Basically, just make them aware that stage theory / developmental psychology even exists. That's about all you are really going to be able to accomplish. If people are into it, maybe you can have future meetings where you discuss things further.

There's little chance anyone in your mastermind is ready for that conversation. Most people cannot even appreciate Green, let alone understand what it gets wrong and how to go beyond it. In fact, that's maybe the most important lesson from spiral dynamics: don't get ahead of your skis. Walk before you run, developmentally speaking.

It's safe to assume you're doing a bunch of BS. As I recall, you also talk about Ken Wilber and God but supported Trump. This is a joke.

No I think you're spot on. I can remember thinking the exact same thing about the establishment. Like, if they're missing the bombshell that is God, what else are they missing? I think it's just inevitable when one is opening up to post-conventional stages of development. But you can't just get stuck in being mindlessly anti-establishment either. That's a failure of meta-cognition to realize that anti-establishment thinking is itself a kind of belief system / ideology that the mind adopts.

Yes exactly. That's part of what made me give him the benefit of the doubt. Of all the popular podcasters out there, he seems to have some of the best understanding of God. He has had legit mystical experiences, no doubt about it. And he does seem sincerely committed to personal growth. It's all very twisted.

This is what I think it was for Aubrey more than any social media algorithm. He's a wealthy guy with a big social circle, surrounded by fellow new agers, elites and those with anti-establishment views. And that has likely come at the cost of truth. Score one for the devil. There's also the possibly he was just always more of a grifter than I realized:

Then you dismiss my perspective to be self-deception. Our positions are currently incompatible. Either there is a reasonable possibility for these macro structures to change or there is not. You obviously believe there is, and I disagree. No I do not. Not at any level that warrants taking it seriously at least. Even with non-linear dynamics, you are still talking a very large time until there is significant change to the macro structures for the better. Significant change for the worse is more likely. I'll ballpark a time frame of a couple hundred years. Certainly we should clean up our act as best as possible.

Aubrey was definitely one I didn't see coming. I always saw him as a solid new age Green, potentially cracking into some Tier 2. I underestimated how badly COVID and his anti-establishment / libertarian views would warp things for him. And I did not anticipate someone like RFK entering the race that would capture him. Once RFK endorsed Trump though, it was obvious Aubrey was going to follow suit. A very disappointing trajectory for a guy I used to have more respect for.