A new vision for the West

[Peter Zemskov]

Currently, there's a clear trend of rising authoritarianism around the world. In the West this can easily be seen in the increase in popularity of hard right populist parties and politicians within democratic countries, such as Trump in the US, AfD in Germany, National Rally in France, etc. The interesting part is that many people seem to be actively rooting against democracy in favour of a downright authoritarian right wing government that is going to uphold traditional values. 

While I think that the reduction of the living standard acts as a trigger, I also believe there's another deep underlying root cause to this problem that often goes unadressed: a lack of vision in western democracies. After we have been liberated from the old collective identities, we seem to be left in this nihilistic void with nothing to pursue, defend and fight for. As a result people feel extremely alienated, directionless and desperately cling to old identities, even if deep down they know that they're just constructions. They simply don't know what to do with their freedom and want to bow to some sort of strong ideology that is going to give them concrete instructions on how to live life. 

I think that in order to solve this crisis we need to create a new vision of where we are moving towards as a society, a new, higher consciousness identity that will give us a sense of direction. But how do we combine freedom with some kind of collective high consciousness identity? How can we obtain social cohesion without going back to reactionary brainwashing? What new forms of society should we strive for beyond liberal democracy in its current form?

[hoodrow trillson]

I think we should also talk about the hardcore onslaught of Russian & Chinese misinformation propaganda that has been injected into western countries for well over a decade now, since the early 2010s — exclusively on the internet.  Like 99% of it being right wing propaganda and absolute misinformation of anything left wing or about democracy.

There was a MASSIVE amount of normal everyday people, that never really cared about the internet/internet culture, social media and all the antics and memes it brought, up until the smartphone became mainstream around ~2010, a few years after the 1st iPhone and Android smartphones dropped in 2007.

Most people who had internet access and who were techies from the late 90s or early 2000s, eventually caught on and understood was what bullshit, what was trolling and what was legitimate (example of early 2000s things:  9/11 inside job conspiracies, Zeitgeist, MK Ultra, etc).  Granted, you had to be physically sitting at a desktop or with a laptop to consume this media and information at the time.  There were no smartphones then.

What happens when hundreds of millions (and now billions) of people have that exact same internet access but now in their pockets, seemingly overnight and all at once, without any previous knowledge or experience having to have waded through various forums full of trolling, fake news and clickbait to understand how it all works?  

This is it!  
 

 

[Leo Gura]

Well, it's basically stage Green hippie ideals. But conservatives don't want to hear it.

Blue is about loyalty to religion, race, and nation.

Orange is about capitalistic materialism.

Green is about opening of the heart and New Age sorts of soft spirituality. Free love, acceptance, diversity, peace.

Edited May 30 by Leo Gura

[Ayham]

I like Nietzsche's idea of the Ubermensch

 

Or the super man, his famous line "god is dead and we killed him", means that we killed the religious values and principles in the west without replacing them with anything better, so nihilism, meaninglessness, mental illness, addictions, etc. started to arise.

I believe his idea was that after "killing god", we had 2 options:

1. Become the Ubermensch, the super man, the society that transforms pain, suffering and meaninglessness into meaning and something valuable.
2. Become the last man, the society that is based on addictions, and constant struggle with meaninglessness 

 

And we have definitely became the second option.

Of course when we take spirituality into account, I think the way into the super man, into the Ubermensch is through spirituality.

Nietzsche tried to find meaning after losing religion, through intense philosophising and logic, but he ultimately ended up being insane, the mind can't win this battle, this is where spirituality comes in.

[Butters]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, it's basically stage Green hippie ideals. But conservatives don't want to hear it.

Blue is about loyalty to religion, race, and nation.

Orange is about capitalistic materialism.

Green is about opening of the heart and New Age sorts of soft spirituality. Free love, acceptance, diversity, peace.

Additionally, I could be fully green but then my society, family, and surroundings will force me to behave in Orange ways. 

So then I'd have to grow more into yellow to fully and passionately integrate the lower stages. To best function in the world you could argue you'd have to get to yellow as soon as possible. 

Orange can be experienced as painful from Green. 

Edited May 30 by Butters

[Nilsi]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, it's basically stage Green hippie ideals. But conservatives don't want to hear it.

Blue is about loyalty to religion, race, and nation.

Orange is about capitalistic materialism.

Green is about opening of the heart and New Age sorts of soft spirituality. Free love, acceptance, diversity, peace.

i'm surprised that's your answer.

green is certainly a step in the right direction, but it isn't up for the task of creating a thriving society. as you said, it's about opening the heart, deconstructing the falsehoods of prior stages, etc. there is the possibility of critique and protest, but no serious engagement with the actual complexity of reality that would be necessary for actualizing these values on a global scale.

turquoise is precisely strategic green, and anything short of that should not be leading us anywhere.

[Nilsi]

2 hours ago, Ayham said:

I like Nietzsche's idea of the Ubermensch

 

Or the super man, his famous line "god is dead and we killed him", means that we killed the religious values and principles in the west without replacing them with anything better, so nihilism, meaninglessness, mental illness, addictions, etc. started to arise.

I believe his idea was that after "killing god", we had 2 options:

1. Become the Ubermensch, the super man, the society that transforms pain, suffering and meaninglessness into meaning and something valuable.
2. Become the last man, the society that is based on addictions, and constant struggle with meaninglessness 

 

And we have definitely became the second option.

Of course when we take spirituality into account, I think the way into the super man, into the Ubermensch is through spirituality.

Nietzsche tried to find meaning after losing religion, through intense philosophising and logic, but he ultimately ended up being insane, the mind can't win this battle, this is where spirituality comes in.

with all due respect, why do you speak on things you don’t know anything about? this is such a comical surface-level reading of nietzsche, which is precisely what leads to bad reputation and misunderstanding of his work.

[zurew]

22 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

turquoise is precisely strategic green, and anything short of that should not be leading us anywhere.

I think you had the stance in the past, if I remember correctly, that a small set of highly intelligent and conscious elites should be making the decisions for society.

Given the assumption that I remember correctly, do you still hold that position? 

[Nilsi]

3 minutes ago, zurew said:

Given the assumption that I remember correctly, do you still hold that position? 

no.

[zurew]

Just now, Nilsi said:

no.

Interesting, would you elaborate on it just a little bit?

[Nilsi]

12 minutes ago, zurew said:

Interesting, would you elaborate on it just a little bit?

i believe in a free and democratic society where the people are educated enough to decide what they want and, hopefully, what’s best for them and the whole.

i think it’s inevitable that there will be individuals who are more prone to leadership, but they should use their gifts for precisely this - educating and guiding their people to make better choices themselves.

taking on increasing responsibility for people in my job has taught me that the love and appreciation you get from being a good role model outweigh all the selfish benefits of authoritarian leadership by a lot. when people rely on your guidance to provide for themselves and their families, you will inevitably develop a deeper sense of responsibility that goes beyond your own needs and wants.

[zurew]

3 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

i believe in a free and democratic society where the people are educated enough to decide what they want and, hopefully, what’s best for them and the whole.

i think it’s inevitable that there will be individuals who are more prone to leadership, but they should use their gifts for precisely this - educating and guiding their people to make better choices themselves.

taking on increasing responsibility for people in my job has taught me that the love and appreciation you get from being a good role model outweigh all the selfish benefits of authoritarian leadership by a lot. when people rely on your guidance to provide for themselves and their families, you will inevitably develop a deeper sense of responsibility that goes beyond your own needs and wants.

I noticed that your tone has changed a little bit recently and you take more dimensions into consideration when it comes to your analysis or speech. By more dimension I mostly mean emotional maturity and being more understanding.

[Ayham]

2 hours ago, Nilsi said:

with all due respect, why do you speak on things you don’t know anything about? this is such a comical surface-level reading of nietzsche, which is precisely what leads to bad reputation and misunderstanding of his work.

I understand that it is a surface level understanding of Nietzsche, I'm still new to his work, thanks for pointing out.

[Peter Zemskov]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, it's basically stage Green hippie ideals. But conservatives don't want to hear it.

Blue is about loyalty to religion, race, and nation.

Orange is about capitalistic materialism.

Green is about opening of the heart and New Age sorts of soft spirituality. Free love, acceptance, diversity, peace.

I agree with Nilsi on this, stage green values are based on the deconstruction and criticism of the old oppressive identities, but offer little proactive meaning. Sure, we need to create a fair, peaceful, free and equal society, but what do we do after we are free and equal? Freedom is only as good as what we make of it and if we don't have any vision of what to do with it, we will fall back into our old toxic ways.

The rub here is how to combine freedom with some sort of identity and social cohesion. Even though individuals should be able to chose their own identities and meaning, there are clearly good and bad ways of doing it. Freedom shouldn't lead us to the ever increasing atomization, like what is happening now, but we also can't impose a single ideology on everybody either.

What I feel we need is a more inclusive, cosmopolitan kind of identity that is going to apply soft cultural pressure on individuals so they become more conscious. Nobody should force you to be any particular way, but at the same time you should know what's possible. For example in our current society, even though we are free to chose our meaning, there's a cultural expectation that we should focus on our materialistic desires. Nothing prevents us you from going higher, but it isn't really acknowledged as something worthwhile. Because of this, most people don't even know that it's a possibility. This is what a higher consciousness society should focus on changing.

[Peter Zemskov]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, it's basically stage Green hippie ideals. But conservatives don't want to hear it.

Blue is about loyalty to religion, race, and nation.

Orange is about capitalistic materialism.

Green is about opening of the heart and New Age sorts of soft spirituality. Free love, acceptance, diversity, peace.

Also, at a practical level how do we deal with all those stage blue people in advanced societies? As we are moving towards green they seem to feel more and more left out and betrayed as they no longer have anything to cling to. I don't really see a way to integrate them and that's a huge social problem

Edited May 30 by Peter Zemskov

[Peter Zemskov]

4 hours ago, Ayham said:

I like Nietzsche's idea of the Ubermensch

 

Or the super man, his famous line "god is dead and we killed him", means that we killed the religious values and principles in the west without replacing them with anything better, so nihilism, meaninglessness, mental illness, addictions, etc. started to arise.

I believe his idea was that after "killing god", we had 2 options:

1. Become the Ubermensch, the super man, the society that transforms pain, suffering and meaninglessness into meaning and something valuable.
2. Become the last man, the society that is based on addictions, and constant struggle with meaninglessness 

 

And we have definitely became the second option.

Of course when we take spirituality into account, I think the way into the super man, into the Ubermensch is through spirituality.

Nietzsche tried to find meaning after losing religion, through intense philosophising and logic, but he ultimately ended up being insane, the mind can't win this battle, this is where spirituality comes in.

And how can we implement spirituality at a societal level? I agree that spirituality is part of the solution, but practically speaking, what a truly spiritual society would look like for you?

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Nilsi said:

turquoise is precisely strategic green, and anything short of that should not be leading us anywhere.

Let's all live on the moon while we're at it.

[Nilsi]

38 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Let's all live on the moon while we're at it.

why so pessimistic?

i recently met a girl who works as a business consultant whom i’d quite comfortably place in turquoise. such people are out there; they aren’t unicorns, and they are who i’d trust to lead humanity to a thriving future.

good luck giving stage green too much power; we are seeing the repercussions of such leadership in germany right now, and it’s a complete shitshow.

i thought you were all about "tier 2 politics?"

[Nilsi]

11 minutes ago, Bandman said:

I don't believe you tbh

i'm a harsh critic, so you better believe me when i speak this highly of someone.

[Carl-Richard]

43 minutes ago, Bandman said:

I don't believe you tbh

I bet you think turquoise = mysticism  Tier 2 cognition is honestly not that rare once you look in the right places. On a global average, sure, it's rare.

Edited May 30 by Carl-Richard