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Life is too “politicized” these days. I think most people sense this but it’s a frustration that goes nowhere, because the cultural language that creates it is incapable of formulating an escape from it
Why is it that every mundane act takes on a political dimension? And why does the tension seem to eternally escalate, each day more heated than the last? Some possibilities, maybe all true:
Possibility: Real economic growth is dead and fiat money and propaganda hide this fact. Fighting gets nastier as the real pie gets smaller
Possibility: Weaponizing ethnic identity was such a powerful electoral strategy that we are now locked in an arms race of fighting over identity
Possibility: Internet hypercommunication creates political hyperconsciousness. The internet as a virtual plane has no objective content, and politics has grown to fill the space, a case of abyssal gigantism https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1063561970945650688
Possibility: Internet hypervoyeurism creates so much mimetic rivalry that the only outlet we have is constant low-grade scapegoating of everyone else, eternal edging, no climax https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1049650017508646912
Possibility: globalism in the form of relatively huge ethnic displacement has moved people predisposed to clashing into closer-than-ever proximity of each other, escalating conflict
Possibility: evil cults that use perverted sexual practices as forms of hazing and social control have infiltrated the highest levels of political power and are successfully manipulating about 65% of Americans https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1060965213539729409
Possibility: the political war is covertly just a sex war, women against men, and the rise of the political and financial power of women is the exact trend of increased politicization we are seeing https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1075401705724887040
Possibility: the affordances into social engineering presented by technology have enabled corporations to pursue profit in ways that have had radically bad externalities, eg, pharma companies rent seeking by promoting transsexualism https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1048660788368404480
Possibility: White people are genetically predisposed towards holiness signalling spirals and ethnomasochism and this is self harm induced by schizophrenic desire
Possibility: birth control and antibiotics and industrialized war have been far far more dysgenic than we ever imagined and politicizing everything is something idiots do and we’re all idiots (stop hitting yourself) https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1029364216187084800
Possibility: environmental contaminants such as xenoestrogens and all the pharms we are pissing into the water supply have reached some threshold concentration and it’s making us all crazy, like lead poisoning but subtler https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1064256626167697409
Possibility: leftism is just a name for the political entropy caused by the Machiavellian actions of mostly well-meaning people who need to manipulate the outcomes of consensus procedures in order to enact political control https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1064256082506203137
When it comes to matters of politics, it’s increasingly obvious they no one has the right answer, and that they don’t even know what the right answer would look like, or if a right answer is possible, or what precisely the question is.
Political stances are based on vague feelings, in part because it’s impossible to predict the 2nd and 3rd order effects of your favorite political program. It is hard to escape the impression that everyone just chooses whatever stance flatters them personally
If any political position is “correct” it’s an accident because there is no correct unless there is a specific and well-defined goal. Goal: beat the enemy. Goal: stop feeling so alone. Goal: figure out how to believe in a goal https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1068665265368424448
In the philosophy of Sartre, the full conscious awareness of the implication of having true freedom is called Nausea. Freedom is another word for the state of having no intrinsic purpose.
You’ve heard this schtick many times: instead of “freedom from what” you should be asking “freedom FOR what”—But in truth the state of freedom itself is unbearable, and the idea that we could satisfy our need for purpose with a petty goal of our own devising is a tragic punchline
You think you want freedom? Freedom isn’t a gift, it’s a curse. No I’m sorry I’m supposed to say it is what you make of it through the strength of your own illimitable will. Buy my online seminar course on Eldritch Self Actualization for $997 https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1050389266063228928
The way to decrease politicization is to decrease political freedom. Democratic life forces you to be a political being, but it doesn’t give you the good incentives of an owner, because if everyone is an owner then no one is https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1030442816223080449
Every act becomes a political act because if it isn’t, if you let your guard down for a second, someone else will exploit the resource that you both own a stake in through democracy. This is the tragedy of the commons. You know it, of course
This is in fact the trick employed by nationalisms of all flavors, and the source of their appeal. Nationalism promises us an escape from politicization by revoking our political freedom by homogenizing the body politic
The only effective civic nationalism would be one that ruthlessly crushed all cultural difference across different ethnic groups, such as the Chinese treatment of the Uighurs. This comes at a great cost
Ethnic nationalism fails as soon as people of the same race notice they there are yet sub-ethnies within their chosen racial delineation. We already see this when white nationalists start breaking out their taxonomies of white people
In the end nationalism doesn’t even solve any conflict, it only externalizes it. If you align the interior of your country on a single axis, you invariably align them against some outside enemy
Consider the warrior; in times of peace, he makes war against himself. In fact there may be no more galvanizing engine of purpose than to have a fearsome enemy. Life without conflict is pointless
Hegel: self-certainty comes from superseding [this] other: in order that this suppression can take place, there must be this other. Or in Donne’s poetry, ‘thou wilt lose the style of conqueror, if I, thy conquest, perish by thy hate'.
The fervent dissident longs for his persecutor. The militant atheist depends on the church for his identity. The radical communist would be lost without capitalist society
We should be grateful for enemies. Bless him that curse you. Why? The vicissitudes of social consciousness are the evolutionary pressure that creates intelligence. Ravens evolved a theory of mind so they could lie to other ravens https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1037330756207407105
You long for peace? You long for death. It would be better to fight forever than to win forever
