Nilsi

There is no "normal capitalism." Capitalism functions through unlimited growth and unquenchable desire; it is intrinsically excessive. There can be healthy markets and an economy, but no healthy capitalism.

A highly intelligent individual can perhaps outsmart capitalism and transcend some of its influence, but this will always be a race, and the vast majority will get caught and devoured by it. Therefore, to be truly emancipatory means to be absolutely opposed to capitalism.

Yes, capitalism is the issue, as it is what makes it increasingly difficult to discover higher aspects of life and, unless stopped, will start turning increasingly more sacred aspects of life into commodities and fuel for its fire.

I personally know people working bullshit jobs in media, and they were all hired purely based on their degree.

This might be true for startups and small companies with an entrepreneurial spirit, but it becomes increasingly untrue as the company grows larger. Big companies only care about degrees because they are the perfect standardized representation of competence (which, of course, they aren’t in reality, but that’s the premise). The hiring process in big companies is completely streamlined and based on standardized criteria. All the HR department cares about is hitting their targets and keeping their job, so there is no incentive for them to think outside the box and meaningfully engage with the actual, unrepresented competence of the applicant.

Capitalism is totally foreign to Spiral Dynamics. The force of capital is present at every stage and only becomes more sinister the further up the spiral it moves. This is the perfect example. Postmodern capitalism is being select for, because it is even more effective. The emphasis on flexibility and adaptability is ruthlessly exploited by capital interests, leading to increased precarity for workers, less job security, fewer benefits without corresponding increases in wages of quality of life. All aspects of life are increasingly commodified and mediated. The economy becomes dominated by signs and symbols (e.g. brands, images) rather than material goods. Identity and self-worth become increasingly tied to consumer choices. Most importantly, the idea that there is no alternative to this capitalist realism becomes internalized and limits the ability to work toward different social or economic ends. It’s not hard to see how this is a distinct break from the rational enlightenment ideal of free market economy and it's promise of universal affluence and happiness and how it precisely coincides with the emergence and rise of the relativistic mind in western society. Attributing capitalism to low development is the gravest of mistakes, and trivializes the pervasive force of capitalism to a dangerous degree.

This is precisely the grave mistake most people make when interpreting Spiral Dynamics. There is a right-left polarity at every level of the spiral. You can be at the relativistic stage and be oriented towards traditionalism (e.g. Alexander Dugin, Jean Baudrillard), and you can be at the egocentric stage and be oriented towards socialism (e.g. parts of left-wing terrorist organizations like Antifa or RAF). Ultimately, neither left nor right is "better"; more complex and inclusive worldviews are superior to less complex and inclusive ones. Whether you lean towards maintaining or subverting the status quo has no bearing on that whatsoever. Also, the right is absolutely essential for a functioning society, for reasons that should be obvious to any mature person, so don’t be so flippant, for fuck‘s sake.

I was asking for structure, not for content. Is it really that hard? This ubiquitous superficial reading of Spiral Dynamics is precisely why virtually no serious intellectual takes that model seriously. It's a shame, because there aren't many convincing arguments for a post-postmodern sensibility, but Spiral Dynamics at its best certainly is one

Characterize the structure of SD Green for me then, if you don't mind.

Does money have any a priori value? Your argument is analogous to saying „let’s all stop believing in money.“

What makes you the boss is that all your employees agree you’re the boss.

This dynamic (being nice to your boss/talking shit behind his back) is precisely what constitutes the boss’s being. If you could treat your boss like your intern, there would be no reality to his role. Imagine you were watching a great movie, and all of a sudden, the character on screen starts breaking down, confessing he’s just an actor and was just pretending and role-playing for your sake. My point is, you don’t want the truth; you want to know and know they know, and you both know it’s best for all involved to continue pretending as if none of you know. Instead of valuing „truth,“ why don’t you value mastering the act instead? This is my ethical proposal.

There is no need to make this explicit. If you don’t want to date someone, you will not date them. You don’t need to add insult to injury by telling them what they already know and what they know you know. Imagine if you told your boss that he is a childish, insecure douchebag… You cannot maintain any social order without the above-described social contract. I'm not arguing for conservatism here; I'm simply arguing against literal chaos. lol - that’s not what I was getting at at all. Dr. Freud would argue this tells us more about your fantasy than mine.

This is precisely what I said I didn’t mean (i.e. content).

To add some spice to the discussion: I would place Hitler within the SD Green stage. The way he deconstructs all the prevalent grand narratives of his time and blurs the lines between description and normativity in the aforementioned speech is classic postmodernist rhetoric and foreshadows the more rigorous academic formulations of this intellectual sensibility. This, of course, depends on how one interprets the subject of Spiral Dynamics, which I claim is concerned with the form/structure of one's worldview rather than the content (a point also quite explicitly stated by the authors of that work).

Don’t you know the oldest rule in the book? [age/2+7]

Great speech: very lucid, timely, and passionate - it's not hard to see why Hitler was able to claim such ridiculous amounts of power, without any initial capitalist maneuvering. The bigotry and backwardness of his views are quite obvious, though, from as detached a standpoint as listening to some YouTube audio 100+ years later. His analysis of the current state of the world in his time was quite astute up to the point where he portrays Germany as the victim of some grand conspiracy and thus justifies a total "emancipatory" war. The reality is that Germany's demise was the result of a complex, decentralized historical process and not the plot of some anti-German Jewish deep state.

Great 80s synth-pop classic. One of the gems of what I consider a rather uninspiring era of pop music, besides obvious highlights like Kate Bush, Prince, and a handful of other acts.

Is it rude to reject some ugly creep hitting on you? Your intuitions will be based on how competent and engaging the person sounds to you, which can, of course, be exploited by really good con artists, but only to the degree that the con artist is significantly more intelligent than you are. Considering you are probably quite intelligent and the average call center agent is likely relatively unintelligent, this will usually result in the right call. This will never result in a false negative though, so hanging up when you feel like it is always the correct call.

Of course, there is an element of game theory in this, where you can defect from the social contract and take immense delight in causing some havoc. However, this only works as long as the large majority of agents behave "unconsciously"; otherwise, total chaos would ensue. You don’t really want to change the fundamentals of the system; you just want to be able to mess with them to a large enough degree where you feel you have some influence and power over reality, but not so much that you actually break the "unconsciousness" and "normalcy" of the social domain.

I completely disagree. To follow your example: we know the other person is fat and ugly, they know they are fat and ugly, and yet we both agree to pretend as if we don't know the other person is aware — which I claim is the basis of satisfying interpersonal relationships. As far as constructive feedback and critique go, we welcome that, of course, but only insofar as it doesn’t undermine our social games. What makes sex so desirable is precisely all the ambiguity and games that come with it. The actual physical act, detached from all the fantasies and social dynamics, is completely empty and meaningless. The world you are proposing would be utterly nihilistic and inhumane, and you would quickly wish back all these supposed "mistakes" in human interaction.

All I hear is "me, me, me." Your woman clearly cares. All you have to do is pretend to be in a good mood and look forward to those days a couple of times a year so she can celebrate and enjoy herself on these occasions. Of course, you don't have to care about those silly traditions, but you better care about your woman.

Learn some basic Transactional Analysis scripts and stop taking it personal.

I cycle everything for 5 days on and 2 days off, but you're right, I do notice that tolerance builds up over time with certain substances regardless. One solution to this would be to cycle through distinct nootropic stacks every few months, so you never become too attached to anything in particular. The accelerationist solution would be to perpetually keep optimizing and adding new compounds, habits, and technologies. I'm currently more oriented towards the latter.