Modern slavery question

[zazen]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That is Zionist ideology. Which is stage Blue nationalism.

Yes, the West is very bad at handling terrorism, which requires development beyond the West.

11 hours ago, Emerald said:

@zazen

It isn't just Zionism. That's just the Stage Blue reasoning that's used to get Israeli Stage Blue people on board with the barbarisms of the US and Israel.

You need a story to sell barbarism to the people so that they can rationalize to themselves why it's okay. And Zionism is just the wrapping paper that's being used.

It's similar to how the US used the idea of Manifest Destiny to create a pretty narrative around Native American genocide. That way, the average people could romanticize it and support it without focusing on the reality.

The US also did the same thing with slavery and created a narrative that black people were 3/5 of a person and needed the white masters to civilize and employ and help them through giving them work. This enabled liberal-minded people of the time to rationalize to themselves why slavery is okay.

There's always a narratives you have to feed the people to get them on board so that they don't have to question their own goodness and so that they don't challenge the state's agenda. 

But the people in the government are typically focused on maintaining power and control. And they may use the stories to rationalize their evils to themselves. I'm sure that many people in the Israeli government truly are 'dyed in the wool' Zionists.

But I have no doubt in my mind that the US and most of the government officials aren't the slightest bit interested or invested in Zionist ideology.

Though, they'll pretend to it to convince Americans that they just care about "securing a homeland for Jewish people" and "fighting antisemitism" or the variety of ways they justify it. But that's just to justify it to the people.

The US and Israel have other power-based imperial agendas... which likely have to do with taking control of trade routes and interrupting the potential formation of an Arab empire (of many nations with a common tongue) by having an American ally right in the center of the Middle East.

And the interests of the US are national defense, acquisition of resources, and maintaining it top imperial status... not Zionism.

Great post and writing Emerald. I agree.

Iraq, Afghanistan, countless coups, mob behavior in dealing with and threatening the ICJ or even Tik Tok by extortion of a fire sale to Western oligarchic hands, including so much more - can't be pinned solely on just Zionist ideology. In fact, even Zionism can be argued to be a Western implant itself - led largely by Ashkenazi Jews of European descent, carrying the ethos of Western conquest and colonization into the region. That contrasts starkly with the coexistence historically practiced by indigenous Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East.

That further reinforces the point that the West’s ethos hasn’t fundamentally changed and that our development has been lopsided and one dimensional. The distinction between material and moral development can't be overlooked. We can develop horizontally in the material, yet lack in the vertical dimension of ethics and morals - in our dealings with others. The development of skills and systems honed for material accumulation can far outpace the commensurate moral development that would use that newly gained power in a more just way.

The US’s full throated support for Zionism reveals a level of complicity that Spiral Dynamics can't excuse. The idea that development is linear - moving from stage to stage like levels in a video game - is a linear Western way of thinking which is a bit too reductionist and simplistic. It’s the same mindset that gave us "manifest destiny" which Trump literally invoked yesterday - blatant imperialism that further reinforces the idea that the West hasn't evolved in its character or domination driven ethos since its Paganistic roots in Europe, all the way through its colonial days and now deep into its imperial era. Materially bloated, but morally and ethically anorexic. 

Spiral dynamics can too easily let the US off the hook by claiming it’s acting at a "higher stage" when it’s clearly operating out of a lower stage and by lower values. Ironically, it achieves material gain through the lower values of exploitation, subjugation and domination, then retroactively claims to have gotten those ill gotten gains due to its higher values that others are lacking or behind in. The West acts as if it introduced these values to the world, that it brought the world into the ''1st world'' era to play by ''1st world values'' - never mind the appeal of these universal values that have had ancient civilizations and cultures aspire towards them from way back when. The West definitely institutionalized and systematized them, credit where credit is due - but they heave also weaponized them as a veneer to mask their imperialist underbelly and finger wag everyone else hypocritically.

The tools have changed, but the core behavior remains the same. Acting like Hulk in a suit, smashing and dominating the planet. And what good are the tools if the user of them is sloppy in their wielding - even dangerous in their wielding. Spiral dynamics basically boxes, labels, and ranks development into neat little boxes - which can then be used to explain away power imbalances by claiming it’s part of some grand evolutionary process we just need to move through - and that the West is so clearly ahead in that very process which is a notion that falls under scrutiny.

 

Edited 18 minutes ago by zazen