DocWatts

Saying that money doesn't buy happiness is just patently false when people's basic Survival needs in an Industrial or Post Industrial society are secured almost exclusively with money. Money is Freedom in our Society. Almost any problem that a person may run in to in this life will be made worse without access to financial resources. Here's just a few examples that cover a wide range of life scenarios: Physical, mental, or emotional Health problems are much harder to manage when you're poor Interpersonal relationships become harder to maintain when one or both parties are consistently dealing with stress that comes from financial instability. Employment at lowers levels of income tends to be less intellectually and emotionally fulfilling Poverty damages people psychologically in empirically verifiable ways, leading to insecure attachments throughout one's life, and difficulty with long term planning and decision making. Just look to the number of Lottery Winners who end up broke after a few years for an illustration of this. Personal Time to pursue one's Self Actualization goals, and live their life in an Authentic Way, is secured almost exclusively with money While it's true that there are eventual diminishing returns once an Individual earns a set amount of Income over and above what they need to meet their needs (I've seen studies which show this to be anywhere from around $90k a year to $120k year), in general you don't see people who've had actual experience with Poverty repeating the silly notion that "money doesn't buy happiness".

In addition to the Libertarian roots of the country, something also to consider is that America is a much more socially fragmented country than somewhere like the UK, where an emotional regime of fear and mistrust is still very much prevalent here. The modern root of this comes from Social Conditions within the US, where massive levels of inequality and a declining standard of living have imprinted a scarcity mindset on to much of the population. You could see this at play when the pandemic first broke out here, where the supermarket shelves were empty because frightened people were hoarding things like toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Add to this that Bad Actors in government and the media have exacerbated social divisions within the country, with low levels of solidarity and social trust as a result. Gun Manufacturers have contributed to this in intentional ways, as they are in a position to capitalize upon societal trends of paranoia and mistrust.

If we were designing the system from the ground up, something like what you're describing would be a workable and sane system. Problem is that things have gotten so bad in the US that there's more guns than there are people. Recalling literally hundreds of millions of guns isn't something that's even remotely feasible; and that's leaving aside that tens of millions of people here equate to thier "right" to own a small arsenal with freedom of speech or freedom of religion, and cling to Gun Culture every bit as much as religious folks cling to their Holy Texts. The intractability of this problem will take Generations to solve, because of how inextricably it's intertwined with a host of other systemic problems within the US.

I live just outside of Detroit, which is something approaching the City equivalent of a Failed State. I wouldn't be surprised if Material living conditions were better for many middle class people in Beijing than they are for some of the worst neighborhoods in Detroit. That said, you're not going to be have your life destroyed for Publicly questioning the government over here. Of course that's to deny that people don't have thier lives destroyed by arbitrary applications of Power in a flawed Democracy, but most people most of the time are going to enjoy a far greater degree of personal autonomy under a flawed but still Democratic system.

I'm always going to feel more qualified talking about the shitty aspects of American culture, but that doesn't mean other Societies aren't also shitty in thier own idiosyncratic ways. For America, I'd sum it up by saying that the living conditions for many, many people are far worse than you'd expect for what's supposedly the richest country in the world.

First off, I'm glad that you managed to make it out of there safely. As to untangling this problem, it's very common to see Reductive approaches that attempt to undermine how difficult of a problem this is. The problem isn't just that there are more Guns than there are people in America, it's that there's one gun per every person in an environment of where basic support structures for psychological Health are completely inadequate, and where extreme levels of inequality (including a declining standard of living) are a driving force behind widespread feelings of alienation and despair.

Looks like more bad news on the Horizon.... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/10/25/21532853/amy-coney-barrett-senate-vote-end-debate Really hope Democrats do everything they can to obstruct this, and considering that it's likely that they'll have control of the Presidency, House, and Senate by January, perhaps some actual reforms to the Judicial System and the Supreme Court might be on the table.

That's actually a great way of putting it. That's accurate, but at the same time my intuitive sense is that finding the shortcomings of Reductionist paradigms (from Above, rather than from Below) requires a much greater conceptual Leap than the one that's required for Religious people to come to the realization that the events chronicled in Holy Texts are allegorical stories meant to help them live thier lives, rather than a literal account of the past. Or maybe not, as I'll fully grant that it's possible I lack the imagination to grasp how difficult of a conceptual leap that understanding Biblical stories as didactic fables may be for some people.

I've found it can be helpful to think of Materialist Reductionism as occupying a similar space within Atheism as Scriptural Literalism does in the Religious Communities. While I would never claim a false equivalency between the two (Scriptural Literalism being far more maladaptive in the modern context), it can be useful for demonstrating that there are more or less nuanced perspectives within each paradigm. Just as religious belief doesn't necessarily have to conflict with Darwinian Evolution, Atheistic beliefs don't necessarily have to hinge upon crude Materialist or Reductionist metaphysics.

I've been transitioning to a plant based diet myself, and agree with the aims of Vegetarianism, even if I'm not %100 Vegetarian yet at this point in my life. Being overly moralistic about it is counter productive; the aim should be to shift people's thinking towards more sustainable and more ethical diets, rather than an all or nothing affair. I kind of look at Atheism the same way; the aim should be to help nudge people towards healthier forms of belief, and away from problematic manifestations that are maladapted to coexisting within a secular, pluralistic society. The idea that everyone in the world should be an Atheist is so counter productive and unrealistic that I have to laugh at the naivety of even attempting such a concept.

You forgot a step. First you clean your room. Then you climb the dominance hierarchy.

If repackaging the ideas of Joseph Campbell within a self help framework that demonizes postmodernism is enough to qualify one as a Tier 2 thinker, I guess that category isn't exclusionary as I had been lead to believe Am I missing something here? Because I've seen far more substantiate critiques of postmodernism from the likes of thinkers such as David Foster Wallace, and far better cross cultural insights from the likes of authors like Joseph Campbell and Jared Diamond (or hell, novelists such as Dostoyevsky). I can see the value that someone at SD-Stage Red might get from being presented with Blue value Memes, but I have to wonder if his level of popularity has more to do with ego backlashes on Culture Wars issues, rather than then profundity of his ideas.

You're trying to have a discussion with people who treat thier Atheism as an an Ideology, and have built an Identity around it. So no surprise that they get defensive whenever their ideas are challenged; might as well go on to a Vegan forum and try to argue that it's okay to eat Meat, or try posting Leo's Conspiracy Theory video on an Alex Jones forum. Out in the "real world" there's more of a spectrum between 'Soft' atheism (think someone like Einstein) and 'Hard' atheism (someone like Richard Dawkins). Though I would definitely place myself at the 'soft' end of the spectrum, I'm always more interested in discussing metaphysical questions with people who aren't dogmatic in thier beliefs, regardless of whether or not they believe in God. For my part, I'm naturally going to be suspicious of anyone who doesn't have a degree of humility when discussing fundamental truths about the nature of reality. "How fortunate it is that I met you good sir/ma'am, who's so confident in your answers to questions that have eluded philosophers and mystics for thousands of years."

The 'true but partial' aspect applies to Social Construction Theory as much as it does to anything else. As insightful as Social Construct Theory is, it's also an unavoidable reality that any complex social theory will become flattened and simplified as it permeates beyond the confines of its original authors. This isn't always a bad thing, but it can lead to situations where it's being applied to subjects and situations it wasn't designed to critique, resulting in sloppy applications of said theory, which can lead to Reductionism.

As long as Systems are in place to reward Bad Actors, you can be sure that someone will almost always be willing and able to fill that role. The best thing that can be done to prevent Mitch or his 2.0 counterpart from being successful in thier obstructionist tactics is to change the Rules of the Game so they're not nearly as effective. Which in practical terms would mean Voting in Candidates who are in favor of Eliminating (or at least reforming) the Filibuster, and pressuring those already in Office in that direction. Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico would also go a long way towards making it harder for Bad Faith actors to use obstructionist tactics, in addition to the obvious injustice that would be addressed by giving Representation to these populations. Sadly I see the Republican Party as basically beyond salvaging by this point (Mitch and Trump are the logical progression of the Rot that started to set in as far back as Reagan). Ensuring that Democrats have a wide enough Majority in future elections that one or two dissenting Senators (such as Joe Manchin) isn't enough to derail Senatorial Reforms is more or less the only path towards fixing any of these issues.

Just having the luck to be born into a first world nation is a form of privilege; whether you were born into fortunate or unfortunate circumstances is beyond an individual's control, so it would be silly to be guilt ridden about something you've had no choice in. I would argue though that those of us born into fortunate circumstances do have at least some responsibility to those who are less well off however. How one should respond to that will depend on the social circumstances of thier society. For someone born in America, that might look like working to recognize and dismantle racial inequities. In more egalitarian societies like Iceland, it might look like contributing to NGOs that address inequities on a more global scale, or at the very least having a degree of humility when people speak of lived experiences that are very different from your own.

The way that 'Personal Responsibility' is being applied here is in a selfish and immature way. It's basically the narrow and limited lens that Libertarians use to look at the world, and is used to obfuscate how one's actions impact other people. The idea that people in some sense 'get what they deserve', divorced from the context of thier social circumstances as well as the constraints that are imposed them, is an incredibly reductionist way of regarding the lived experience of other people. The Grown Up version of Personal Responsibility is Social Responsibility; being aware of how you have other responsibilities that extend beyond your own narrow self interest, and not projecting your own life story on to other people; i.e."I overcame adversity, if other people haven't it's because they're lazy and unmotivated." Or to put it another way: you're not just an individual, you're part of a community.

Unless the deprivations you describe are things that you yourself have had personal experience with, I'd be careful about telling people who've been victimized in ways you haven't that they need to just take responsibility for the precarious situation that they've been placed into. Radical Responsibility is great if you're just applying it to yourself, but comes off as incredibly ignorant when you begin weaponizing it to delegitimize other people's struggles. The 'Radical Responsibility' that you espouse cuts both ways, if you're telling blacks that they need to take Responsibility for the additional struggles they face due to thier skin color, then by your own logic Whites have a Radical Responsibility to take ownership for the ways they've benefitted from thier privileged status in Society, and work to dismantle Institutions and Practices that they've benefited from at the expense of other people.

White Fragility is a real thing, and is inextricably linked with ethnocentric Identity Politics that are used to manipulate people into Voting against thier own self interests. Fact is that Right Wing politicians in countries like America have literally nothing to offer policywise that would make an ordinary person's life better in any material way. Exploiting Cultural Divisions to keep people angry and distracted from socio-economic issues has proven a highly successful tactic in America. The idea that White people were special just for being white had become so ingrained, that when socio-economic conditions changed and large numbers of whites began experiencing the same sorts of economic deprivation that have long been prevalent in communities of color, the loss of this privileged status began to fuel Right Wing populism. So while White Fragility is a real thing that we need to come to terms with, the rub is that if the issue is framed in an overly confrontational manner, it's just as likely to push people towards Right Wing populism. A better tactic in my view would be to put more emphasis on the many ways that working class whites and communities of color have both been victimized, and have a common stake in fighting for a more equitable system.

They seem like what is known as a Process Oriented Political Party, which is one more focused on arriving at policy positions through deliberative consensus building, with the aim of elevating Political Discourse. This is in marked contrast to traditional political parties which try to force through their own narrow policy platform through maneuvering and debate. Probably too far ahead of the current zeitgeist to make a big impact, but it's definitely very encouraging to see. If you're interested in the subject, I recently read two excellent books which go in to a ton of depth on Process Oriented Politics : The Listening Society, and Nordic Ideology, both by Hanzi Freinacht. If I'm remembering correctly, I believe Volt may have been one of the examples the author lists by name in the text.

As disappointing as it was for the $15 minimum wage not included in the $1.9 Trillion Covid Relief Package, it's also fair to give due credit and point out that this is arguably the best piece of major Legislation to be passed in at least ten or fifteen years. Granted, this is more due to how dysfunctional our Legislative system has become and how shameless many in Power have been in passing Bills that offer almost nothing of value for ordinary Americans; still, hard to argue that compared to business as usual this is anything but a win. Prior legislation of a comparable scope generally tended to disproportionally benefit the wealthiest people in society, which is why its commendable that both working and middle class people will benefit from this in tangible ways. The increase to the Child Tax Credit alone is projected to cut child poverty in half.

Both the contemporary Left and the Right have shortsighted, Toxic elements. Pointing out counter productive elements on the Left is useful, so long as it's not being done with the intent of drawing a false equivalency between the two. What are the worst elements to come out of Toxic aspects of the contemporary Left? Hypersensitivity, labeling people as racist or transphobic who might not necessarily deserve it, and not being pragmatic enough in thier political aims are some of the most obvious things that come to mind. In addition to that there's what Ken Wilber calls Aperspectival Madness, where the deconstruction of postmodernism ceases to serve a productive purpose and leaves an Ontological vacuum in its place. The effective consequence being what David Foster Wallace characterizes as the tyranny of postmodern irony and the resulting dearth of sincerity that's endemic to much of modern culture: ie. "How dare you have the audacity to ask me what it is I really mean?" While it would be intellectually dishonest to downplay these problems, it's also true that it's not contemporary American Left wing culture that's downplaying practices that are destroying the planet, nor Left Wing policies that are needlessly imprisoning millions of people, and leaving many more to languish in poverty and sickness. Probably the most damning thing that can be said of the Left is that it can be terrible at messaging, and that it might unintentionally drive some people backwards into reactionary politics. But how much of this is the Left's fault versus Bad Actors on the Right who are intentionally exploiting Culture Wars divisions to achieve exactly this effect is a more ambiguous issue

Came across two videos recently discussing the notion of the Banality of Evil which I found to be quite intriguing. The Banality of Evil was an argument that was developed by German born political theorist Hannah Arendt, in reaction to the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, for his crimes as Architect of the Holocaust. Her impression of the man was that he was not in fact the evil monster she had come to expect; rather he came across as a rather unimpressive and unimaginative bureaucrat who was lacking in empathy. The great evil he created had less to do with an Intentional desire to do harm, and more to do with unreflective selfishness for such mundane an petty reasons as career advancement. She expounds on this to argue that people who unthinkingly participate in systems can contribute to evil in the world. While I don't dispute the overall argument (indeed it provides a compelling explanation for many current evils in the world), upon reflection my intuitive sense is that it's in fact a partial truth (and promotes Social Good by prompting self reflection on one's actions), on the other hand it doesn't adequately account for the willful and enthusiastic participation in human cruelty that arises from belief systems and ideologies. The arguments presented in the two Videos offer a seemingly compelling argument in this direction. The first video is a discussion of the Milgram Experiment, which is a famous social psychology about obedience to authority figures, where participants are asked to administer electric shocks to another person when pressured to do so by a researcher that was present with them in the room. What the lecturer in the video argues is that the way the experiment has been generalized in Culture draws the wrong conclusions from the experiment. Rather than the popular notion that orders are obeyed mechanically and unthinkingly when responsibility for one's actions can be deferred to an authority figure, what the lecturer argues for that what is actually going on is the following : "Obedience to authority is not a 'blind' or 'natural' process. Rather it's a product of engaged followership that is predicated upon identification with those in authority - whose cause is believed to be right, and who are followed on this basis." In the context of the Milgram experiment, this materialized as the participants having an engaged identification with the authority figure (the researcher), rather than with the subject who was receiving shocks. And upon being debriefed, rather than feeling remorse over their actions (of being coerced into administering a lethal shock into another person), the participants saw their actions as promoting Social Good by advancing the cause of science. The second video is a rather direct refutation of Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil argument as proposed by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, as it was applied to Adolf Eichmann and the Holocaust. In it he argues that far from being a pencil pusher whose perpetuated cruelty as a byproduct of unreflective self interest, a large part of Adolf Eichmann's job was to justify the necessity of the Holocaust to authority figures in occupied countries, who were very often reluctant to cooperate with the SS. And that far from being dethatched from what was going on, he was in the position he was in because he was enthusiastic in his anti-Semitism, believed in the mission of the Reich, and knew full well that after the war the Allied countries would see what he was participating in was a Great Crime against humanity. Furthermore, no one who ended up in the SS got there unless they believed in the mission of the Reich, and were already predisposed towards the regime of Hate that that Nazis inculcated. He doesn't mention it in the video, but it's my understanding that that recruitment environment of the SS was heavily predisposed to favor people with sociopathic and psychopathy personality traits. He goes on to argue that Authority figures inculcate echo chambers which blind people to the immoral effects of wrong decisions, because they are engaged followers whose interpretation of the social environment is heavy biased by those in charge. I would be very interested to hear some other thoughts and opinions on this subject, as the arguments laid out by both seem to be fairly compelling.

Casting doubt on the credibility of Information can be Good, but that will entirely depend on the motivations of the person making such a claim, and how that claim propagates throughout the Culture, including how that refutation is Framed by those who broadcast it, and also how Media Literate and Epistemologically sophisticated the person hearing that information is. Not all misinformation comes from Bad Faith actors, sometimes a dissenting expert makes a qualified and limited dissenting claim on a particular subject, which then becomes flattened and broadened as it's broadcasted by non-experts and reaches the eyes and ears of ordinary people, with important context and qualifications stripped away, to disastrous consequences (such as one or two scientists questioning the effectiveness of certain types of facemasks gets warped into a broad statement that face masks "don't work"). This can also happen when a study that is later discredited is generalized and makes waves as it works its way through the culture, with the Stanford Prison Experiment being a prime example here, or the discredited (and later retracted) 1998 study which popularized the notion that there's a link between vaccines and autism. But very often incredulity is an intentional tactic used by Bad Faith actors who are not being honest about their motivations and intentions; such as the Fossil Fuel Industry and its well documented disinformation campaign to discredit climate change science being a prime example. The intention was to confuse the public by creating the false impression that there was ambiguity among climate scientists about whether humans were causing the climate to change, and that arguments for against human caused climate change were equally credible. That 4chan reference wasn't a hypothetical, as it's become a mainstream political movement with tens of millions of adherents who look to an anonymous 4chan poster as a credible information source for factual claims about important political issues.

@vladorion "Who decides what is misinformation?" This sort of rhetoric is a common tactic employed by Bad Faith actors to avoid being called out for spreading misinformation, by attempting to cast doubt on the credibility of any information that contradicts their narrative. It's a fallback that's used when someone doesn't have any credible evidence to back up their arguments, and is employed by people who make Bad Faith arguments that 4chan is as reliable a source as Reuters or the CDC. If you want to figure out which sources of Information are reliable, I would recommend that you educate yourself on rhe basics of Media Literacy.