Thoughts on Political Messaging

[Leo Gura]

@Hardkill Conservatives wanted you to pray to Jesus and don't think too hard for the last 80 years. But you disobeyed them. Now look what mess you're in.

[Hardkill]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Hardkill Conservatives wanted you to pray to Jesus and don't think too hard for the last 80 years. But you disobeyed them. Now look what mess you're in.

What?

Why would we ever want to go back to being forced to live a Judeo-Christian life?

Also, why has the past 80 years of liberalism been more responsible than hyper capitalism, neoliberalism, and the right-wing media are for the mess we are in?

Edited September 5 by Hardkill

[Alex4]

1 hour ago, Hardkill said:

What?

Why would we ever want to go back to being forced to live a Judeo-Christian life?

Also, why has the past 80 years of liberalism been more responsible than hyper capitalism, neoliberalism, and the right-wing media are for the mess we are in?

He’s not saying we should go back to the 1950s. I think Leo is pointing out the dangers of liberalism. Just look at any field or activity, and you'll see thousands of totally contradictory opinions, some come from ignorance (most), and others from bad intentions. Nowadays, any fool can grab a camera and start talking about politics, spreading false information and hate. You need to have a damn clear head to avoid falling into toxic traps nowadays. 
At least in a theocratic society before the 20th century, there was little dissent within a community. When you hear elders speak, they often say that communities used to be more united. Even if part of that unity was based on ignorance, it helped prevent internal conflicts.

[Emerald]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Hardkill Conservatives wanted you to pray to Jesus and don't think too hard for the last 80 years. But you disobeyed them. Now look what mess you're in.

Such is the way of individuation, progression, and expansion... messy, chaotic, and polarizing... like giving birth.

But expansion beyond the old paradigms is much better (in this particular instance) than the stagnation and "still-birthness" that would have ensued if our technologies, institutions, and economic patterns would have progressed into industrial and post-industrial levels of development... but our level of intellectual, behavioral, and moral development would have stayed operating off of the agrarian era adaptations.

We would all be like cassette tapes, forcefully jammed into a cd player.

Such is the life of the agrarian-minded conservative in a post-industrial society.

Edited September 5 by Emerald

[Hardkill]

5 hours ago, Alex4 said:

He’s not saying we should go back to the 1950s. I think Leo is pointing out the dangers of liberalism. Just look at any field or activity, and you'll see thousands of totally contradictory opinions, some come from ignorance (most), and others from bad intentions. Nowadays, any fool can grab a camera and start talking about politics, spreading false information and hate. You need to have a damn clear head to avoid falling into toxic traps nowadays. 
At least in a theocratic society before the 20th century, there was little dissent within a community. When you hear elders speak, they often say that communities used to be more united. Even if part of that unity was based on ignorance, it helped prevent internal conflicts.

Yeah, but conservatives in America, especially those on the far-right, have pushing so hard since the 1980s to eliminate any checks on their right-wing rhetoric, even if it causes mass chaos and confusion for the public.

I think that right-wing libertarianism has been the true culprit.

Mature liberals and progressives, who are generally smarter and more sophisticated than conservatives and traditionalists, want there to be fair regulations on all information and content from both the left-wing and the right-wing.

[Nemra]

How the hell would someone misunderstand what Leo said?

He is saying progress comes with costs, and recognizing the costs is good. I don't think he means that conservatives always understand what they're against.

[Alex4]

9 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Yeah, but conservatives in America, especially those on the far-right, have pushing so hard since the 1980s to eliminate any checks on their right-wing rhetoric, even if it causes mass chaos and confusion for the public.

I think that right-wing libertarianism has been the true culprit.

Mature liberals and progressives, who are generally smarter and more sophisticated than conservatives and traditionalists, want there to be fair regulations on all information and content from both the left-wing and the right-wing.

My take is that they defend unlimited free speech as a cover for their racism, transphobia, homophobia, and so on. I think it’s in response to stage green, but I haven’t really thought it through. Anyway, in many cases, they only support free speech in theory and when it suits them. It's a twisted situation where conservatives are hijacking a right they historically haven't helped to achieve, just to defend the current (or previous) status quo.

[Alex4]

18 minutes ago, Nemra said:

How the hell would someone misunderstand what Leo said?

He is saying progress comes with costs, and recognizing the costs is good. I don't think he means that conservatives always understand what they're against.

Exactly. We chose to have sovereignty over our opinions and judgement, and now we’re learning to deal with the consequences. Still, I think it’s a necessary stage in human evolution.

[Yimpa]

Quote

Thoughts on Political Messaging

PM is clever and deceptive 

[aurum]

On 9/4/2024 at 5:59 PM, Emerald said:

Of course, I will consider it, as I have in relation to your previous posts.

But as of right now, I'm either not understanding what you actually mean and there is a miscommunication... or I have been understanding you correctly and your point of view just doesn't square with the way the world actually works.

Either way, I need more of your thought process to get whether this is your viewpoint and why this is your viewpoint.

And it needs to not involve the Spiral Dynamics model because "It's tier 2 thinking" just doesn't cut it as an explanation. 

Great.

Reading through our conversation again, I think the biggest sticking point for us is about sacrificing pragmatic political outcomes in favor of non-tangible sense-making victories. You see this as a lack of integration between pragmatism and sense-making, and which can lead to very dangerous situations when it comes to autocrats and bad faith actors who would take advantage of this. In addition, you don't see the general populace as interested in deep sense-making, which makes advocating for it somewhat pointless.

I would argue my perspective is more nuanced than that.

I'm certainly not advocating for abandoning pragmatism entirely. That wouldn't even be possible and would be a very silly position to take. But I DO think there are trade-offs, and I'm trying to point to those trade-offs here. And of course the biggest trade-off is that your sense-making will suffer.

This idea of "integration" is very tricky. Integration does not mean there won't be trade-offs. I can integrate sense-making and pragmatism such that they work together, but not 100%. That's an important difference.

Call it whatever you want, but the reason I bring up SD Tier 2 is because you can go meta in your sense-making to the entire political game. Such that you are no longer identify as a progressive, a conservative, a centrist, a meta-modernist or anything else. You are not on the political map anymore. And this will deeply improve your sense-making, such that you see things very few people will see.

But, you cannot get to this place through sheer pragmatism. You will have to surrender more and more of your political ideology, which of course is tied to your particular survival agenda. This is what makes it so challenging. 

Why would anyone do this, especially if it's going to hurt their particular survival agenda? That's a good question. 

First off, I don't expect most people to do what I'm describing. On this we are in agreement. Most people are just going to continue to engage in pragmatic politics that suit their limited political agenda. So I don't think we are in danger of losing that.

I only talk about this on the forum because of the goals of this place. I'm going to assume most people here are interested in Conscious Politics and sense-making. That's kind of Actualized.org's whole purpose. It's to shoot for something higher.

Second, sense-making can enhance your agenda and the overall health of the political sphere. There is a meta-problem happening where everyone pursuing their limited political agenda actually degrades the whole. So it's not strictly the case that sense-making is dangerous and doesn't lead to positive outcomes.

But I don't want to make any guarantees about results in order to maintain the purity of the sense-making process. Seeking specific results is what distorts this process, rather than going where the truth leads you. This is the value of detachment.

We also have to understand that our political sphere is currently mostly dominated by falsehood. Gaining power in such a system means going along with falsehood, not sense-making. So I don't make guarantees about gaining political power either, although it might be possible depending on the circumstances.

This doesn't mean you have to just capitulate to bad faith actors either. I see the goal as keeping your mind capital Neutral, not lowercase neutral. Lowercase natural is essentially just trying to not take a side, whereas capital Neutral evaluates things in a multi-perspectival way and then makes distinctions between what is more or less true.

Hopefully this clears things up.

Edited September 6 by aurum

[zurew]

On 2024. 09. 05. at 5:28 AM, Bobby_2021 said:

Noo doode I am stage coral and you are all stage turquoise normies. 😂😁

That's the kind of "nuanced" conversation that happens here. Brag that you are at a higher stage of development on a poorly made half assed developmental model and refuse to explain further.

For sure.

Some of these conversations are 100x more harder than they seem (if we want to actually have a substantive one and not one where we pretend that we talk about something profound when we are not) and most of us are not equipped to have these conversations, but a lot of people won't admit that they don't have their semantics figured out regarding a specific topic and they will jump in anyway. And not just semantics but most of the time they havent even thought about what kind of norms should things be judged by given a particular topic, and that will make the whole conversation confusing and gibberish.

You know that people havent thought about it more than 1-2 layer deep about a topic when they cant give answers regarding what certain words they use mean. When you start to stumble after 1-2 questions about your semantics thats when you know, that you need to step back and think about what you actually about and clear up your thinking.

[Emerald]

19 hours ago, aurum said:

--

"This idea of "integration" is very tricky. Integration does not mean there won't be trade-offs. I can integrate sense-making and pragmatism such that they work together, but not 100%. That's an important difference."

My entire point is that pragmatism is necessary for sense-making. And if you are not pragmatic, you are definitionally NOT engaging in sense-making.

And this quote showcases a misunderstanding of what integration entails and the underlying crux of my disagreement with your perspective.

What you're talking about is balance. Imagine a see-saw that you have to stack bricks on. And you have only 11 bricks to stack. And on one side of the see-saw you have sense-making and on the other side of the see-saw you have pragmatism.

And in the notion from your above quote, it's like 'If we add more weight to the pragmatic side of the seesaw, it will take away some weight from the sense-making side of the seesaw. The closest we can get to balance is 6 bricks one side and 5 bricks on the other. Either way, it's like pie and there are trade-offs where one will get in the way of the other. And wouldn't it be even better if we put most of the bricks on the sense-making side?! Of course, I see that we can't negate pragmatism altogether, but can't we at least stack 8 bricks on sense-making and 2 bricks on pragmatism?'

In contrast, integration is where you take two opposites that then come together to create something similar to, different from, and greater than the original two polarities.

So... truly integrating sense-making and pragmatism is both more pragmatic and makes more sense than either of the two polarities alone.

And you can't have true sense-making or true pragmatism without the other side of spectrum integrated.

All dichotomies work like this when integrated. It is similar to how discipline and freedom are necessary for the other to exist... or like how skepticism and open-mindedness are opposites but are actually one and the same if you practice them skillfully enough.

Look up the meaning of "The Chariot" card in the Tarot... or the concept of "the sacred marriage" and "The divine child" as an archetype.

You view pragmatism and sense-making as opposites that always clash or compete, where I view them as opposites that can either compete or integrate depending on how one approaches them.

"You don't see the general populace as interested in deep sense-making, which makes advocating for it somewhat pointless."

Having been a high school public school teacher and a substitute teacher working in classrooms from pre-k through 12th grade, it has given me experiences that have shown me that there is a huge variance of intelligence levels that span the entire spectrum. And school is like a microcosm of the future of adult society.

And I have worked with students who could skate by on natural intelligence... and with very hardworking students that simply cannot understand the work no matter how hard they tried, just because their level of intellectual capacity is capped with regard to certain subjects.

And my estimate is that only like 25% of people have the capacity to think deeply on politics and other philosophical topics. And that doesn't even get into the consideration of how interested a person is in politics... or how much time they have to pursue a deeper understanding of it.

So, because you and I (and most others on this forum) are naturally brainy kids (because you have to be a brainy kid to enjoy Leo's channel)... we may have a tendency to be unintentionally intellectually elitist in assuming that 'If people just tried hard enough or valued sense-making in politics more, they could understand the complexities of politics.'

But this would be like naturally athletic people, expecting people who aren't built that way to "just run faster" or "Just lift more weight". And for them to imagine a utopian future where everyone is an athlete.

This is why I see your view-point as overtly idealistic. You over-estimate the collective's capacity to develop a deep intellectual level of understanding regarding politics.

Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has operated through specialization. And this means that different people have different strengths and weaknesses in different areas. And it's the combination of both strengths and weaknesses that individuals have that make society run.

Thus, the weakness of the individual and the strength of the individual integrates to create a stronger collective.

So, it is not realistic to expect the majority of people to engage in deep intellectual work as that is just one type of specialization and will never be a default.

"Such that you are no longer identify as a progressive, a conservative, a centrist, a meta-modernist or anything else. You are not on the political map anymore. And this will deeply improve your sense-making, such that you see things very few people will see."

Perhaps for an individual person who is interested and able to think deeply about politics, it is good to detach from a political identity because it gives you intellectual flexibility... and to only use these labels as a means of coalescing and organizing with others to achieve certain pragmatic ends.

For example, there are tons of very influential political people who believe that I shouldn't have any power at all. And there are tons of people that agree with them that I can see in every comment section I've ever been in.

And I've done some very uncomfortable exploration of those perspectives by totally allowing myself to fully entertain them and consider them. And it's helped me learn a lot about the vulnerabilities that those viewpoints grow from, which in turn enables me to address these issues more effectively.

And it has also helped me work through my own internalized misogyny by finding how these perspectives also live in me.

So, that's been helpful for me... but without my intellectual/emotional bent, I would not be able to navigate such a treacherous descent into that collective wound and come out the other end better off than when I went in.

So, I wouldn't open up that discussion publicly because it would normalize those viewpoints in the eyes of the average person. And it would give people (especially girls and women) a huge burdensome journey through the Leviathan of that wounding that most are very unlikely to be equipped to make sense of.

So is there value in that for some people who are on a hardcore inner work journey? Absolutely.

But it's not going to lead to good outcomes if this perspective is discussed by the masses, as it would not be understood and would shift the Overton Window. This is why certain knowledge has always been kept under lock and key except for those with the initiation into the mysteries.

Wisdom can be dangerous in the ears of the unwisened.

Now with the labels you mentioned, there is a lot of pragmatism behind why these labels exist, as it helps people join together in solidarity in a coalition to fight for certain policies. And that is something that cannot be done away with because people's interests and rights are things that must be fought for. And you need a spearhead (and the rest of the spear to make things happen.)

And without this consideration, there is no politics beyond people in power running the table on those with none. There is only strength in numbers and labels help you coalesce in numbers... as do narratives and slogans.

Also the reality is that, even if you slough off these labels, you're still going to have values that you hold. 

Like even if I didn't label myself as a progressive... I'm still not going to be okay with abortion bans, discrimination against minority groups, government enforced theocracy, or privatized health insurance... etc.

These lines in the sand must be drawn, and that must be prioritized over some theoretically more conscious way of orienting to politics.

Edited September 6 by Emerald

[aurum]

5 hours ago, Emerald said:

You view pragmatism and sense-making as opposites that always clash or compete, where I view them as opposites that can either compete or integrate depending on how one approaches them.

What I'm trying to get at is that it's both.

They clash /compete and they work together.

Let's use your example of skepticism vs open-mindedness. These are dichotomies that we could integrate, such that my skepticism supports my open-mindedness and my open-mindedness supports my skepticism. Both are important psychological functions. And all dichotomies ultimately are distinctions that must collapse if we thoroughly investigate them.

^I think this is what you are highlighting.^

I am indeed highlighting more of the "balance" side of things. Where there are actual tradeoffs between open-mindedness and skepticism. No one is going to be perfectly balanced in this way, and their personality will have tradeoffs depending on their particular disposition towards open-mindedness or skepticism.

"Competing / working together" is itself a dichotomy that must collapse.

So yes, there is a degree in which sense-making and pragmatism integrate together. I personally like to conceptualize that integration as part of SD Tier 2. But there is also a hierarchy of prioritization, and sense-making is on the bottom at Tier 1. Tier 1 is unable to deeply care about sense-making because it is too wrapped up in survival and its particular agenda.

5 hours ago, Emerald said:

Having been a high school public school teacher and a substitute teacher working in classrooms from pre-k through 12th grade, it has given me experiences that have shown me that there is a huge variance of intelligence levels that span the entire spectrum. And school is like a microcosm of the future of adult society.

And I have worked with students who could skate by on natural intelligence... and with very hardworking students that simply cannot understand the work no matter how hard they tried, just because their level of intellectual capacity is capped with regard to certain subjects.

And my estimate is that only like 25% of people have the capacity to think deeply on politics and other philosophical topics. And that doesn't even get into the consideration of how interested a person is in politics... or how much time they have to pursue a deeper understanding of it.

So, because you and I (and most others on this forum) are naturally brainy kids (because you have to be a brainy kid to enjoy Leo's channel)... we may have a tendency to be unintentionally intellectually elitist in assuming that 'If people just tried hard enough or valued sense-making in politics more, they could understand the complexities of politics.'

But this would be like naturally athletic people, expecting people who aren't built that way to "just run faster" or "Just lift more weight". And for them to imagine a utopian future where everyone is an athlete.

This is why I see your view-point as overtly idealistic. You over-estimate the collective's capacity to develop a deep intellectual level of understanding regarding politics.

Since the dawn of civilization, humanity has operated through specialization. And this means that different people have different strengths and weaknesses in different areas. And it's the combination of both strengths and weaknesses that individuals have that make society run.

Thus, the weakness of the individual and the strength of the individual integrates to create a stronger collective.

So, it is not realistic to expect the majority of people to engage in deep intellectual work as that is just one type of specialization and will never be a default.

I actually think we are in total agreement here.

Indeed, I was one of those brainy, gifted kids who had an easier time at school than many others. And that's just the start of the list of unearned advantages I've had.

This is why I don't expect most people to care about Conscious Politics in our lifetime. And why I am very selective about who I have these kind of conversations with. Most people are not going to get there, and that's fine.

I talk about this with a small minority of people, such as yourself, who are at the leading edge of cognitive development.

5 hours ago, Emerald said:

Perhaps for an individual person who is interested and able to think deeply about politics, it is good to detach from a political identity because it gives you intellectual flexibility... and to only use these labels as a means of coalescing and organizing with others to achieve certain pragmatic ends.

For example, there are tons of very influential political people who believe that I shouldn't have any power at all. And there are tons of people that agree with them that I can see in every comment section I've ever been in.

And I've done some very uncomfortable exploration of those perspectives by totally allowing myself to fully entertain them and consider them. And it's helped me learn a lot about the vulnerabilities that those viewpoints grow from, which in turn enables me to address these issues more effectively.

And it has also helped me work through my own internalized misogyny by finding how these perspectives also live in me.

So, that's been helpful for me... but without my intellectual/emotional bent, I would not be able to navigate such a treacherous descent into that collective wound and come out the other end better off than when I went in.

So, I wouldn't open up that discussion publicly because it would normalize those viewpoints in the eyes of the average person. And it would give people (especially girls and women) a huge burdensome journey through the Leviathan of that wounding that most are very unlikely to be equipped to make sense of.

So is there value in that for some people who are on a hardcore inner work journey? Absolutely.

But it's not going to lead to good outcomes if this perspective is discussed by the masses, as it would not be understood and would shift the Overton Window. This is why certain knowledge has always been kept under lock and key except for those with the initiation into the mysteries.

Wisdom can be dangerous in the ears of the unwisened.

Totally with you on this.

One learns to keep their mouth shut 

5 hours ago, Emerald said:

Now with the labels you mentioned, there is a lot of pragmatism behind why these labels exist, as it helps people join together in solidarity in a coalition to fight for certain policies. And that is something that cannot be done away with because people's interests and rights are things that must be fought for. And you need a spearhead (and the rest of the spear to make things happen.)

And without this consideration, there is no politics beyond people in power running the table on those with none. There is only strength in numbers and labels help you coalesce in numbers... as do narratives and slogans.

Also the reality is that, even if you slough off these labels, you're still going to have values that you hold. 

Like even if I didn't label myself as a progressive... I'm still not going to be okay with abortion bans, discrimination against minority groups, government enforced theocracy, or privatized health insurance... etc.

These lines in the sand must be drawn, and that must be prioritized over some theoretically more conscious way of orienting to politics.

I don't really care how you label yourself, I care about how your mind functions.

Is your mind ideologically progressive? Or ideologically conservative? Or ideologically anything?

If so, you're probably not engaging in Tier 2, Conscious Politics. 

But yes, you can use labels pragmatically. And yes, you can decide you like certain policies more than others. I am not neutral on policy.

[Hardkill]

The Fairness Doctrine used to enforce diverse views point on every news channel and on every political outlet before it got repealed in the late 1980s. It also prevented the emergence of political media echo chambers or epistemic bubbles.

I wish the government could somehow bring some version of that back.