Bored of Narratives

[Boethius]

I'm so bored of the various narratives and counter-narratives that seem to form the basis of contemporary politics and societal discussions. I'm tired of ideologues sucking up 90% of the oxygen in the room and going to "war" with opposing ideologues, either on the internet, on cable "news" channels, or in person. It all feels so tedious, and unlikely to change anytime soon.

Ken Wilber wrote in his 2017 book (Trump and a Post-Truth Society) that 10% of the US population will be at Yellow by the end of this decade, presumably out of necessity to solve these disputes that ideologues are incapable of working out themselves. But being a centrist in today's society feels extremely risky. I'm thinking of Barack Obama (the only Yellow politician in today's society?) saying in late 2020 that slogans like "Defund the Police" were more harmful than helpful. The progressive activists painted him as out of touch at best, and complicit in upholding white supremacy at worst. And yet he was right! The movement to defund the police has failed in its goal (or whatever you want to call it, since the activists always hedged on exactly what it was they wanted) of defunding the police, and instead cities are awkwardly working out compromise piecemeal reforms of their police departments.

So if narratives just lead to unnecessary divisiveness, and conscious dialogue feels a bit pie-in-the-sky at this moment, what is the way forward?

https://unherd.com/2021/12/how-defund-the-police-backfired/

[JosephKnecht]

That is your narrative.

Are you not bored with it too?   

[Boethius]

Well, I suppose narratives do serve some purpose, even if they are never fully true. I'm just not sure what to do with this fact.

 

To bring it to the personal level, don't most people, in their own personal lives, get tired of telling stories about themselves? Doesn't it get tiring always painting oneself as a victim of every interaction, or the hero, the suffering saint, the perpetually misunderstood, etc? Can a person really live their entire life consistently exagerrating and misrepresenting the interactions they have with others? That is what strikes me as a rather boring way to live.

[DocWatts]

I'd disagree with Barrack Obama being Yellow, but even if he was it wasn't to his advantage because he ended up being taken advantage of by Republicans who weren't operating in Good Faith. What substantative progress would you say that he made on any systemic problems during his time in office?

Joe Biden (with the benefit of hindsight) at least has enough wisdom to realize that the other side of the isle isn't negotiating in good faith, and Biden isn't wasting political capital trying to onboard people who are trying to nuke his presidency (and American democracy, for that matter)

Someone like Noam Chomsky is also a Yellow thinker, so Yellow doesn't necessarily preclude being highly critical of existing structures and institutions.

Centrism, while seemingly the most 'reasonable' position, isn't by default always the most appropriate response to every situation. I would also argue that centrism isn't necessarily a mark of Yellow, although Yellow can use centrism in certain situationally appropriate scenarios.

For example the 'middle of the road' stance on something like Climate Change (such as market based solutions like Cap and Trade) might have been adequate if they had been adopted and consistently applied 30 years ago. But it's entirely inadequate to avoid a climate apocalypse after three decades of doing nothing of substance to address an existential threat.

Edited December 30, 2021 by DocWatts

[Boethius]

23 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

I'd disagree with Barrack Obama being Yellow

I think he was operating at Yellow as well as he could given the constraints of the (predominantly Orange) system in which he was enmeshed. Personally, I don't have much patience for the sort of "Bernie bro" critique that any politician not actively working to implement the socialist revolution is a shill for corporate America, and I can't help but feel that that bias animates much of the leftwing criticism against Obama.

26 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

but even if he was it wasn't to his advantage because he ended up being taken advantage of by Republicans who weren't operating in Good Faith.

That's definitely true! Obama said he kept waiting for the Republican "fever" to break, and yet it continues to go on 6 years since Obama left office. I was really hopeful, back in 2011, that the Simpson-Bowles commission would propose a grand bargain on federal spending that would actually garner bipartisan support, but the Republicans refused to grant Obama any sort of a win.

30 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

What substantative progress would you say that he made on any systemic problems during his time in office?

Obamacare.

Along with stimulus for addressing the 2008 financial crisis and reform of Wall Street. Was it the socialist revolution? Nope. Did it go far enough? Probably not. But as you yourself say, he was stymied at every turn, and so he probably did the best he could given the conditions he was handed.

34 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Centrism, while seemingly the most 'reasonable' position, isn't by default always the most appropriate response to every situation. I would also argue that centrism isn't necessarily a mark of Yellow, although Yellow can use centrism in certain situationally appropriate scenarios.

I think there is the centrism that mindlessly tries to split things down the middle, and then there's the centrism that tries to systematically understand the issues involved and reach a balance of interests between the various stakeholders. The first form of centrism is probably more Orange in nature, at this point in time, whereas the second form of centrism is fundamentally more likely to be Yellow. I argue that Obama's centrism was more of the second type -- not least of all because Obama always seemed principled, to a fault even.

36 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

But it's entirely inadequate to avoid a climate apocalypse after three decades of doing nothing of substance to address an existential threat.

Even though climate hysteria on the left is fashionable these days, I don't think scientists are seriously saying that "apocalypse" is what we face, and I'm personally sceptical about whether this is the most helpful sort of language in the world. I do agree policy options for addressing the challenge of climate change are narrowing ever more as we continue to drag our feet in acting, but I think middle of the road options like "cap and trade" and certainly nuclear energy remain our best options.

I mean, what else would you propose? That we deconstruct the American highway system, revert to local autonomous communities, and go out in our backyards and start worshipping the trees again?

[DocWatts]

36 minutes ago, Boethius said:

Obamacare.

Along with stimulus for addressing the 2008 financial crisis and reform of Wall Street. Was it the socialist revolution? Nope. Did it go far enough? Probably not. But as you yourself say, he was stymied at every turn, and so he probably did the best he could given the conditions he was handed.

I have to wonder whether Obama's personal friendship with McCain (himself an honorable guy) gave him false hope that the Republican Party eventually would come around, and that the Bad Faith obstructionism which would eventually bloom into the Cult of Trump was a passing fad. Unfortunately he was wrong on that account, something that Joe Biden fortunately learned from.

Obama was obviously a sophisticated thinker and gifted politician, and probably could have been a great President in a more functional political environment where both sides were mostly operating in Good Faith.

36 minutes ago, Boethius said:

I mean, what else would you propose? That we deconstruct the American highway system, revert to local autonomous communities, and go out in our backyards and start worshipping the trees again?

If you recall the political instability that tends to happen when streams of refugees escaping a civil war from places like Syria bring to the rest of the world, imagine what's going to happen when hundreds of millions of people are displaced due to Climate Change. 

That's in addition to the trillions of dollars of economic damage that's going to accumulate from currently livable coastal areas being under water, and from extreme weather events such as fires and hurricanes. 

A World War 2 scale mobilization towards sustainable technology is really the only appropriate response at this point. 

Perhaps it wouldn't need to be so if the problem wasn't swept under the rug for as long as it has, but unfortunately as substantative action was continually not taken the scope of adequate responses is narrowed over time.

Getting every major country in the world off from fossil fuels needs to addressed with the same urgency as if it's the 1940s and Germany was thought to be developing an atomic bomb.

A large portion of what countries like the United States spend on thier military needs to be shifted towards treating Climate Change as a national security threat. And this will likely involve the affluent nations of the world having to subsidize renewables in the developing world as well, because it's not enough for places like the US and Western Europe to switch over to sustainable energy if the largest countries in the world are still burning fossil fuels.

Rather than the 'turning back the clock to pre-industrial times' that you alluded to, it would be the exact opposite; massive investments in technological development to make industrial civilization sustainable.

Edited December 30, 2021 by DocWatts

[Boethius]

14 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Obama was obviously a sophisticated thinker and gifted politician, and probably could have been a great President in a more functional political environment where both sides were mostly operating in Good Faith.

I agree that Biden seems to have learned this lesson, but I also think he has much less leverage to work with than Obama did. I can't help but see Biden as a rather weak president (and I say this having supported him in the primary and the general elections). A lot of time remains for the Biden administration to turn things around, however, so I try to remain hopeful.

16 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

If you recall the political instability that tends to happen when streams of refugees escaping a civil war from places like Syria bring to the rest of the world, imagine what's going to happen when hundreds of millions of people are displaced due to Climate Change. 

 

I agree that one of the scariest parts of climate change, which is grossly under-reported, is the effect of forced climate migration on global stability. This is the reason why the pentagon regards climate change as the number 1 threat to American national security. Of course a lot of conservatives probably think we just need to take an "American first" attitude, but that doesn't seem to me to be reasonable (to say nothing of lacking in compassion!)

17 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

A World War 2 scale mobilization towards sustainable technology is really the only appropriate response at this point. 

Yeah, I probably agree with this. As all piecemeal efforts fail in the coming years to conclusively "solve" the problem, we will have to increasingly ramp up our efforts and act cooperatively with other countries to face the challenge. I don't see this as possible any time soon -- there are simply too many in-denial Boomers for us to muster the energy needed.

19 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

A large portion of what countries like the United States spend on thier military needs to be shifted towards treating Climate Change as a national security threat. And this will likely involve the affluent nations of the world having to subsidize renewables in the developing world as well, because it's not enough for places like the US and Western Europe to switch over to sustainable energy if the largest countries in the world are still burning fossil fuels.

I believe that a lot hinges on what China understands as being in its own best interests. It would be one thing if the world could be divided into developed Western nations that have created the problem of climate change versus exploited 3rd world countries (Vanuatu, anyone?), where the primary issue involved is one of compassion. But China is rising as a great power, and while it's clear that China doesn't give a f*** about anyone but China (just look at the Nazi like treatment of the Uighur population) it's not clear how much of a threat climate change is to Chinese interests. So I'm sceptical of our ability as Americans to simply shift resources away from defense and towards fighting climate change.

23 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Rather than the 'turning back the clock to pre-industrial times' that you alluded to, it would be the exact opposite; massive investments in technological development to make industrial civilization sustainable.

Eh, I didn't mean to be quite so snarky in my previous post. I myself kind of like the idea of living in harmony with the natural world. But I suspect a massively technocratic approach will need to come first before the more romantic ones can be given a try.

[sholomar]

I think spiral dynamics is being used to stroke the egos of many here (and in progressive society) into thinking their philosophy is the end all, be all of moral superiority and this can be used to justify authoritarian like control over the populace "for their own good" which I disagree with. Trying to thwart our evolutionary nature and suppress the laws of nature such as natural selection actually hinders growth in the long run. On the other hand Leo made a good point in a another post equating rich people to cancer cells...you can't allow really powerful people to have totally unchecked levels of wealth and influence either. It's a balancing act.  Out here in rural South Dakota a few families tend to control entire towns and it can become a toxic atmosphere that stifles growth.

Ill give credit for Leo criticizing China in his latest video on truth but I see way too many people on the left in modern America trying to "cancel culture" so called conservative or traditional beliefs and I don't believe this idea of "community responsibility" should be used to turn society into a borg collective where everyone must believe the stage greenies because they are so superior. They are not. We need to learn to tolerate our differences. I don't see the left as so much more superior to the right...I think they are both nuts. They both hold their cultlike belief systems that they spend lots of effort to emotionally defend. Sorry but there are clearly some unhappy, emotionally damaged people here who think making the entire planet assimilate to their belief system would solve all the world's problems. It would not.

Basically I'm for heavy checks and balances and shaking up the snow globe with relative frequency...never allowing any one group of people to exert too much control over another. 

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by sholomar

[Jodistrict]

On 12/29/2021 at 0:39 PM, Boethius said:

I'm so bored of the various narratives and counter-narratives that seem to form the basis of contemporary politics and societal discussions. I'm tired of ideologues sucking up 90% of the oxygen in the room and going to "war" with opposing ideologues, either on the internet, on cable "news" channels, or in person. It all feels so tedious, and unlikely to change anytime soon.

I  agree.  The war of ideologies is an indication of an unbalanced society.   I don’t even like spiral dynamics because it perpetuates the primary myth of Western culture:  “progress”.   I am gravitating towards  shamanism – the pursuit of authentic, earth-centered, spiritual wisdom.  The antidote for ideology is connection.

[Space Lizard]

On 1/4/2022 at 6:28 AM, Jodistrict said:

I  agree.  The war of ideologies is an indication of an unbalanced society.   I don’t even like spiral dynamics because it perpetuates the primary myth of Western culture:  “progress”.   I am gravitating towards  shamanism – the pursuit of authentic, earth-centered, spiritual wisdom.  The antidote for ideology is connection.

Yeah, I totally agree. I’m not just bored of grand narratives, I’m actively hostile to them. A grand narrative is inevitably used to seek grand power. In the West we’ve lived under a series of grand narratives and associated empires for thousands of years—Logos/Philosophy, God/Christianity, Progress/Science—to the point that we’ve forgotten how to live without them. The white man's sickness is empire and ideology; he forgot how to just be, without imposing himself on the world. That's why I think postmodernism, which rejects all grand narratives, is a step in the right direction for Westerners, even though it's associated with a lot of things I don't care for. 

Quote

I mean, what else would you propose? That we deconstruct the American highway system, revert to local autonomous communities, and go out in our backyards and start worshipping the trees again?

Why not? What’s so great about highways, or so bad about autonomous communities and worshipping trees?

[Carl-Richard]

On 4.1.2022 at 3:28 PM, Jodistrict said:

I don’t even like spiral dynamics because it perpetuates the primary myth of Western culture:  “progress”.   I am gravitating towards  shamanism – the pursuit of authentic, earth-centered, spiritual wisdom.  The antidote for ideology is connection.

Development and progress are not necessarily synonyms. One is more descriptive, the other more normative. SD is analogous to models of prenatal development: it's the inevitable path of growth given the correct conditions. However, you would never say that a 2 week old embryo is "better" than a 3 month old fetus.

[Jodistrict]

48 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Development and progress are not necessarily synonyms. One is more descriptive, the other more normative. SD is analogous to models of prenatal development: it's the inevitable path of growth given the correct conditions. However, you would never say that a 2 week old embryo is "better" than a 3 month old fetus.

On 1/5/2022 at 11:41 AM, Space Lizard said:

 

 It’s officially promoted as  a development model, but is it really?  Most pictures of the spiral, that I have seen, show the spiral moving upwards, which in our culture “up” means better than “down”.    Would it be fair to say most spiralists would consider green better than red or yellow  more evolved and desirable than blue?  Would a spiralist be happy if you told him the present development will be frozen for a thousand years, or may even go backwards down the spiral?   It is also a linear system with the arrow pointing in one direction, rather than cyclic.  The presumptions of Western civilization are baked into the cake.

Edited January 11, 2022 by Jodistrict

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Jodistrict said:

 It’s officially promoted as  a development model, but is it really?  Most pictures of the spiral, that I have seen, show the spiral moving upwards, which in our culture “up” means better than “down”.    Would it be fair to say most spiralists would consider green better than red or yellow  more evolved and desirable than blue?  Would a spiralist be happy if you told him the present development will be frozen for a thousand years, or may even go backwards down the spiral?   It is also a linear system with the arrow pointing in one direction, rather than cyclic.  The presumptions of Western civilization are baked into the cake.

SD has both linear and cyclical qualities, hence it's a spiral model. It's simply the case that the stages follow each other linearly based on the initial set of empirical data gathered by Clare Graves, which is representable visually as upward movement along a vertical axis (because we associate growth with that type of movement; height of plants, trees and humans). To associate it with a normative type of progress is a post-hoc ideological projection that is not inherent in the model itself ("our culture"). The development may be slow, stagnant or aborted depending on external conditions (just like if an embryo stops getting nutrients).

With regards to Western assumptions, there is a point to be made about the data having a WEIRD bias (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic), as he only sampled American college students, but that applies for basically 90% of psychology (in the West that is).