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Anybody who denies communist atrocities and embraces the power of orgonite is 100% ok in my book.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:15
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Shbobdb posted:Anybody who denies communist atrocities and embraces the power of orgonite is 100% ok in my book. Please don't start ironically defending Pol Pot in here, please Shbobdb don't do it
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Jun 4, 2015 05:16
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There is a good point though that Communism is inherently authoritarian and thus anti-democratic by nature. Popper said as much in 1922. Creating utopias necessitates crushing all possible dissent, because criticism of perfection is completely wrong and logically impossible. A type of government or rule that explicitly recognises its own weaknesses and is a continuous, ongoing process, is much more adaptable and open to piecemeal change.
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Jun 4, 2015 08:06
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It's not desirable to not use the language of intent when talking about these kind of topics, otherwise the sentences simply become way too loving unwieldly. You don't have to apologize for it. The initial idea or concept of memetics isn't itself that descriptive, unfortunately, because any evolutionary process is going to be strongly determined in its function by how 'fitness' is measured. In biology, it's obvious that life, death and number of children is the only real determining factors, but ideas act differently because they're not as 'linear' in their pedigree. They cost nothing to make, sustain or change - morphology isn't as strongly determined by genealogy as it is by opportunity. If a kind of idea can exist in a space, it will emerge fairly quickly, regardless of what came before it. Unless you can figure out how these changes occur, the 'range' that these changes can take, and really understand what drives fitness, memetics is difficult to use. rudatron fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 08:47
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Like, here's an example of what I mean. Suppose you come up with a memetic idea for how these authoritarian groups propagate themselves and thrive or whatever. The big issue you're going to have to confront is that these kind of groups are not dominant, yet they're still stable. If this kind of social community is 'fit' for evangelicals, if the compaction cycle works to create more aggressive subgroups, and that's is the 'fittest' kind of memetic society given their environment, then why isn't every other subgroup like that? Why isn't mainstream society like that? How did this difference arise in the first place? Will the rest of mainstream society eventually resemble the kind of groups you're describing? What are the hidden factors that created this result, and are you're sure they're causal and not a symptom? Every other tom, dick and harry itt, myself included, is going to have different answers to those questions. But you're the only one with the necessary personal experience to answer those questions satisfactorily.
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Jun 4, 2015 09:15
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If it works the same way as genes, there's got to be some sort of environmental factor that makes these traits increase group fitness. Edit: I might be misapplying the concept. I guess the meme doesn't need to improve the fitness of the group it's riding on, but it does need to propagate itself and one of the most common ways that happens is that it increases fitness.
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Jun 4, 2015 09:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yes that's the classic theory but several of those points are at least debatable if not disprovable (Marx's adoption of Hegelian historical dialectic is suspect at best; in practical terms differentiating between "social democrat" and "democratic socialist" often seems little more than hairsplitting; etc.) and would probably massively derail the thread if we actually started debating them here. Please don't conflate social democracy with democratic socialism. Differentiating between them is not at all hairsplitting. They are 2 fundamentally different systems with differences in baseline assumptions and operate in completely different ways. No Scandinavian country is, nor have any of them ever been, democratic socialist states. I realize it's all "far left" from a US perspective, but mixing these up makes you look pretty ignorant to be bluntly honest.
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Jun 4, 2015 10:51
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Thanks for the thread PJ, I've been reading alone but haven't had anything to contribute until now. Although smarter people than me have weighed in on it, memes are useful because they allow people to more easily identify each other and allow tribes to form around shared memes, shared memes which form an ideology or narrative. For an Authoritarian or authoritarian, this is pretty important - they see themselves as vulnerable/threatened by exterior tribes and the memes allow them more security, hence why the grand narrative is core to their very existence. The feeling of being threatened also means a drive to recruit, to expand the tribe, hence how it spreads. This attraction to the set of memes which for an Auth. or auth. is based in personality, hence why the further you drift from that personality type the more freely trade in memes happens. That free trade of thoughts is basically absent in Auth. and auth. and it's what drives "compaction cycles", since the tribe cannot accept new ideas or question what memes the group holds (both actions identify and flag someone as an enemy of the tribe, or comparatively a virus to an immune system) the fault must lie in not adhering to them strongly enough. An internal power struggle ensues as suspect memes/thoughts are cast out, along with whomever holds them. However, the person nor their personality cease to exist so they again seek to reform the comfort they once held to form yet another tribe. By using memetics to form tribes you create a stronger social group, possibly why Auth. and auth. have lasted so long - if everyone is on the same page and then the group acts as a better whole. Why aren't all groups like this? Because the ability to integrate new memes into what constitutes a tribe is also a better strategy in the long term, you do not need to wholesale reject new members and by being open you attract new members more easily. Diving into WMG, but Auth maybe a remnant of when we were hunter-gatherers, nomads, when small tightly wound groups made sense. As agriculture began to flourish, it was easier for less Authoritarian types to flourish - less danger, more time to develop ideas, and more need for just people as a rule. As time has marched on (not trying to be Hegelian here) and the importance for large scale communities has been stressed to achieve dominance, so too has the Auth been progressively pushed further and further to the fringe. Societies breakdown under such uh, paranoid?, stress as to identify so much to safeguard against, and societies which don't do that are much more adaptable and competitive. Authoritarians haven't disappeared because it's still a legitimate, at a small scale, way to survive. That's my dumb idea though, maybe it's got a seed or two someone grounded in academics can plant a much better idea with.
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Jun 4, 2015 11:30
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Orange Devil posted:Please don't conflate social democracy with democratic socialism. Differentiating between them is not at all hairsplitting. They are 2 fundamentally different systems with differences in baseline assumptions and operate in completely different ways. No Scandinavian country is, nor have any of them ever been, democratic socialist states. I realize it's all "far left" from a US perspective, but mixing these up makes you look pretty ignorant to be bluntly honest. As does confusing Marxism and Communism.
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Jun 4, 2015 13:47
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the jizz taxi posted:There is a good point though that Communism is inherently authoritarian and thus anti-democratic by nature. Popper said as much in 1922. Creating utopias necessitates crushing all possible dissent, because criticism of perfection is completely wrong and logically impossible. A type of government or rule that explicitly recognises its own weaknesses and is a continuous, ongoing process, is much more adaptable and open to piecemeal change. The authoritarian governments of the communists circa early 20th century reflected the behavior of the French Republic circa 1793-1794, as both were war time governments and arguing within a vacuum without taking the ongoing international crisis of their respective time periods is pretty disingenuous- nor is it unique to communism in general. The Soviet Union was in a near constant state of war for 20 years, and began to mellow out when threat of invasion was supplanted by mutually assured destruction. HorseLord posted:Actual democratic socialists are anticapitalists also, they just think that they can get there via winning the capitalist state in an election, and reforming their way to utopia. This won't work, but they still do great things in making life better. I really shouldn't have to point out that democracy and capitalism are going through a very rough divorce at the moment. I think anyone who has paid attention to the 2008 crash and the ongoing Eurozone Crisis could easily come to that conclusion- especially in light that some of the most authoritarian governments on the planet at the moment (China, Singapore) have growing or thriving economies. Job Truniht fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 15:00
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FaustianQ posted:Diving into WMG, but Auth maybe a remnant of when we were hunter-gatherers, nomads, when small tightly wound groups made sense. As agriculture began to flourish, it was easier for less Authoritarian types to flourish - less danger, more time to develop ideas, and more need for just people as a rule. As time has marched on (not trying to be Hegelian here) and the importance for large scale communities has been stressed to achieve dominance, so too has the Auth been progressively pushed further and further to the fringe. Societies breakdown under such uh, paranoid?, stress as to identify so much to safeguard against, and societies which don't do that are much more adaptable and competitive. Authoritarians haven't disappeared because it's still a legitimate, at a small scale, way to survive. Except hunter-gatherers weren't like that, they were (some still are) way more democratic than any civilization that ever existed. Decisions were made by the people of the band sitting around, talking about the issue, and coming to a consensus as to what should be done about it. Certain senior members of the group may have had more pull due to their reputation and esteem, but they had no formal authority. Since the band was small and everyone knew everyone else, this was natural. This all went out the window with the adoption of agriculture. Societies expanded from a couple hundred to thousands (and beyond), people interacted with perfect strangers as often as not, and agricultural societies built up surpluses that could be hoarded, controlled, and centrally distributed instead of obtaining what they needed as they needed it. People talk about "cavemen" as if they were under the thumb of brutal patriarchs who would cudgel anyone who disagreed with them. A real elder in a hunter-gatherer band who tried that would likely be exiled by the rest of the group or even have an "accident" happen to him.
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Jun 4, 2015 15:07
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Woolie Wool posted:Except hunter-gatherers weren't like that, they were (some still are) way more democratic than any civilization that ever existed. Decisions were made by the people of the band sitting around, talking about the issue, and coming to a consensus as to what should be done about it. Certain senior members of the group may have had more pull due to their reputation and esteem, but they had no formal authority. Since the band was small and everyone knew everyone else, this was natural. This all went out the window with the adoption of agriculture. Societies expanded from a couple hundred to thousands (and beyond), people interacted with perfect strangers as often as not, and agricultural societies built up surpluses that could be hoarded, controlled, and centrally distributed instead of obtaining what they needed as they needed it. So then the better assumption would be that the organized, hierarchical nature of early societies is a reflection of requiring greater control and, ugh, "messaging" to create a more cohesive society? But that covers authoritarians though. I'm trying to focus on PJs Authoritarians, who seem to be more isolate and paranoid, which you can only retain in smaller groups, larger groups would quickly fracture. If not, wouldn't this reflect Authoritarians as being a relatively new thing for humanity, and a potentially growing subset or personality?
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Jun 4, 2015 15:58
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FaustianQ posted:So then the better assumption would be that the organized, hierarchical nature of early societies is a reflection of requiring greater control and, ugh, "messaging" to create a more cohesive society? But that covers authoritarians though. I'm trying to focus on PJs Authoritarians, who seem to be more isolate and paranoid, which you can only retain in smaller groups, larger groups would quickly fracture. If not, wouldn't this reflect Authoritarians as being a relatively new thing for humanity, and a potentially growing subset or personality? PJ's Authoritarians are driven by fear of a world they don't understand, and need an outside agent telling them what to do because they don't trust their own judgment. They need rigid rules defining every aspect of life. They gravitate to people who will tell them what to do and think, and in turn become the Authority telling others what to do and think. There have been groups of people like this in every period of history. It's not a new phenomenon. What's new is communication systems - these groups can interact with each other rather than remaining isolated clusters.
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Jun 4, 2015 16:04
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Deteriorata posted:PJ's Authoritarians are driven by fear of a world they don't understand, and need an outside agent telling them what to do because they don't trust their own judgment. They need rigid rules defining every aspect of life. They gravitate to people who will tell them what to do and think, and in turn become the Authority telling others what to do and think. I grasped as much, but am apparently poor at extrapolating. Likely due to personal biases I am unaware of, so I'll refrain from muddling the thread further.
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Jun 4, 2015 16:12
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This discussion of memetics is really interesting and I am reminded that I first heard about them in The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom. Has anyone else read this book and have a sense of its validity? I recall being very skeptical of many of the claims and general trajectory of argumentation but it did have some interesting ideas.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:26
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rudatron posted:Like, here's an example of what I mean. Suppose you come up with a memetic idea for how these authoritarian groups propagate themselves and thrive or whatever. The big issue you're going to have to confront is that these kind of groups are not dominant, yet they're still stable. If this kind of social community is 'fit' for evangelicals, if the compaction cycle works to create more aggressive subgroups, and that's is the 'fittest' kind of memetic society given their environment, then why isn't every other subgroup like that? Why isn't mainstream society like that? How did this difference arise in the first place? Will the rest of mainstream society eventually resemble the kind of groups you're describing? What are the hidden factors that created this result, and are you're sure they're causal and not a symptom? There are plenty of populations which are stable, yet not dominant. Every species on earth has its niche and has not spread to take over the world (except one). Another way to put it would be that of a virus that is trying to infect a population with a variable amount of immunity. Well-educated, secular individuals are largely immune to the Authoritarian bent, whereas poorly educated, marginalized, and fearful individuals are more susceptible. The Authoritarian meme then continues to propagate within that susceptible population. Some diseases even make their host more able to spread the disease to others--sneezing in colds, diarrhea in cholera, or even more bizarre poo poo like toxoplasmosis-infected rats not being afraid of cats. The Authoritarian meme, like all successful "parasites", also makes its hosts more able to spread the disease by getting them to withdraw from the educated world and become more afraid while raising their children in the same way. The way to combat it is the same as any disease, universal vaccination with a quality secular public education.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:42
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The authoritarian weltanschauung comes from the experience of having power and seeing it threatened by enemies or those the authoritarian sees as inferiors who are getting "uppity". It is the interaction between a hierarchical system and attempts from within or without to tear down the hierarchy. Secure hierarchical systems don't cultivate this paranoid outlook. BTW your remark about species maintaining harmony with the rest of the ecosystem is nonsense. Wild populations are held in check by external factors such as predation, competition, and food shortages. Without threats to their survival species can and will multiply out of control. After the Permian-Triassic extinction 252 million years ago a single genus of reptiles (who were not ancestors of the dinosaurs) accounted for 90% of all large animals because there was no effective competition and no surviving predators. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 22:13
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Woolie Wool posted:The authoritarian weltanschauung comes from the experience of having power and seeing it threatened by enemies or those the authoritarian sees as inferiors who are getting "uppity". It is the interaction between a hierarchical system and attempts from within or without to tear down the hierarchy. Secure hierarchical systems don't cultivate this paranoid outlook. I completely agree with you about harmony. Species have a niche carved out as the area in which they can outcompete other species, not because species are agreeing to cooperate. That's the problem with using intention language when talking about evolution/ecology.
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Jun 4, 2015 22:30
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So I've been contemplating the concept of the Authoritarian for a while, and something came to mind. I don't want to sound r/athiest here, but I was wondering if there was perhaps an intrinsic link between 'Authoritarians' and faith. Not necessarily in a religious sense, but the general idea of believing in something without necessarily having to see the evidence for it. Let me delve into this a bit.Prester John posted:Run with me here ladies and gentlemen while I temporarily take the governor off the Schizophrenia and let this baby run at full power for few minutes. Human beings are social animals, and it is easy for social animals to come into contact with information that clashes with their preconceived notions. This is called cognitive dissonance, and the healthy reaction to cognitive dissonance is to either modify your notions or to find fault in the new information, so that they can coexist in your mind. Faith, however, is a governor on this. If you are faithful about certain concepts, then you hold them as absolutely true, and do not actively try to find faults with them. Indeed, your faith may be so strong that if you find information that contradicts it, widely accepted information that should trigger cognitive dissonance, something interesting can happen. You can successfully hold both ideas in your head, something usually not possible. After all, the thing you have faith in must be true. And there's no reason why the second thing isn't true either, even if it contradicts the first. So they're probably both true. Just ignore the problematic parts. Faith does have its upsides, though. While it reduces one's capacity for critical thinking, especially about certain topics, it does act as a stabilizer, or governor, for one's mind. It's an island you can go back to. You know something is true. Everything else is changing, but you can go back to this. While this can be a healthy outlet for many people, one can see how it can also be exploited as the jumping off point for Authoritarian thought.
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Jun 4, 2015 23:46
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Cantorsdust posted:There are plenty of populations which are stable, yet not dominant. Every species on earth has its niche and has not spread to take over the world (except one). Another way to put it would be that of a virus that is trying to infect a population with a variable amount of immunity. Well-educated, secular individuals are largely immune to the Authoritarian bent, whereas poorly educated, marginalized, and fearful individuals are more susceptible. The Authoritarian meme then continues to propagate within that susceptible population. Some diseases even make their host more able to spread the disease to others--sneezing in colds, diarrhea in cholera, or even more bizarre poo poo like toxoplasmosis-infected rats not being afraid of cats. The Authoritarian meme, like all successful "parasites", also makes its hosts more able to spread the disease by getting them to withdraw from the educated world and become more afraid while raising their children in the same way. The way to combat it is the same as any disease, universal vaccination with a quality secular public education.
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Jun 5, 2015 03:16
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Even a very expensive centre of learning like a public university still has its silos and echo chambers. Given the relative prevalence of fierce ideologies in both in the humanities and in economics-based business schools, each of which reliant on axiomatic idioms passed down through a tradition of some kind, education cannot erase authoritarianism but can only redirect it at best. The authoritarian impulse is still there to some degree, but even in a completely secular system it would just find whatever replacement to Christianity or the dominant religion is available and weave a new grand narrative out of that instead. That's not to say improved education can't minimize some of the effects of authoritarianism, but there comes a point when it will just adapt into something else. Morroque fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 03:49
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Despite claims to the contrary, I'm really not playing this thread. When I start dicking with things, it is very targeted. For example, people hardcore "into" conspiracy theories who get confused when someone deviates a little bit so they pile on and then real worms start creeping out of the woodwork. I love that poo poo. Also, I'm a proud Communist, in the same way that many people are proud Americans -- it is a wild hosed up ride with a stupid amount of dead people and more than a little colonial "cultural" genocide coupled with a lot of "mass murder in the most modern mode available". But a lot of good came from it as well. Both the good and the bad comes from the Mass Line. "From the People, to the people", the only question is, "who counts as a person?" That's a question a lot of modern progressive movements really fail to address. As an American who recognizes that "the limits of my language are the limits of my world", my go-tos are Cedric J Robinson's "Black Marxism" and one of Barack Hussein Obama's favorite books "The Invisible Man" coupled with more than a little toe-dipping into Foucauldian thought, especially as it applies to queer-issues. You don't need to go full Rorty while recognizing that modernist philosophies like Communism, Democratic Socialism, etc. have some serious issues. I can say that the New Deal was awesome, while recognizing that the concessions to the racist South and the complicity of the racist North are very bad. Different, but not as different as people like to front, you've got poster-children like Norway/Sweden as well as German/France and sliding down the scale the rest of Europe with "social democracy for me, not for thee". I'll whitewash Communist atrocities in the face of "why can't we be more like enlightened xenophobic countries?" You can recognize post-modern critiques of modernism while still being in the modernist camp. Structuralism, post-structuralism, it gets to be a real rabbit hole. But that isn't what this thread is about. The kind of RWA PJ is describing are romantics, they are anti-modern. This thread isn't exalting states that have a really strong social safety net where the far right is using that safety net as a weapon against the other. Not to get all Turner Thesis, but it's all about really hosed up hyper-isolated American communities that do some hyper-hosed up things. Not to go back to the (bad) virus metaphor, but let's focus on a particular pathology.
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Jun 5, 2015 04:22
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Cantorsdust posted:I completely agree with you about harmony. Species have a niche carved out as the area in which they can outcompete other species, not because species are agreeing to cooperate. That's the problem with using intention language when talking about evolution/ecology. This hits the nail on the head really well. We reify the human/nature divide. That makes sense, because that is how our language is structured so trying to avoid it gets clumsy as gently caress, but we can't think they are "real" or take them seriously. Nature is "harmonious" because humans are agents of "chaos" because we are "unnatural". Sure, why not? But that poo poo doesn't matter if there is a temperature spike in a lake, leading to an algal bloom, leading to an anoxic environment that kills everything else. It is "natural" so it creates a "harmonious cycle" but if you don't assume a human/nature divide all you see is a mass die-off and gross "imbalance".
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Jun 5, 2015 04:33
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Job Truniht posted:The authoritarian governments of the communists circa early 20th century reflected the behavior of the French Republic circa 1793-1794, as both were war time governments and arguing within a vacuum without taking the ongoing international crisis of their respective time periods is pretty disingenuous- nor is it unique to communism in general. The Soviet Union was in a near constant state of war for 20 years, and began to mellow out when threat of invasion was supplanted by mutually assured destruction. I don't consider keeping undemocratic structures intolerant of basic forms of dissent but doing away with genocide and mass deportations to be "mellowing out" to be honest. There has been no single communist state that didn't practise widespread censorship and brutality against its population. Modern-day communists say that this is because "real" communism has never been actually tried, but I say that it is because communism is inherently anti-democratic due to its utopian, teleological nature. We can clearly see how libertarianism (the utopian variant of capitalism) would lead to tyranny and serfdom in a very short order, but apparently a lot of left-wing people still get misty-eyed at the notion of ideal communism. Also the material circumstances of the French Terror were very different from those of the Bolshevik Revolution, so I'm not quite sure why you're drawing this particular parallel.
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Jun 5, 2015 09:02
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PJ, just offhand maybe the single most enduring point in your general theory has been, to me, the idea of a compaction cycle. I hadn't been aware of this particular metaphor before and it has really struck me as a potent one. Whether you originated it or not, I hope it gets its own chapter or something in your book. If the single contribution you or your writing made in the world were to make this idea a mainstream concept (and unfortunately, subsequently abused nearly to the point of ruining it like "meme" has suffered) then you will have done significant good right there. And having done a quick google of the term, I'm not seeing it used on my first page of hits in any context outside of geology and hard science, so yes, it appears to have not been internet-meme-ed up yet.
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Jun 5, 2015 12:46
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the jizz taxi posted:I don't consider keeping undemocratic structures intolerant of basic forms of dissent but doing away with genocide and mass deportations to be "mellowing out" to be honest. There has been no single communist state that didn't practise widespread censorship and brutality against its population. Modern-day communists say that this is because "real" communism has never been actually tried, but I say that it is because communism is inherently anti-democratic due to its utopian, teleological nature. We can clearly see how libertarianism (the utopian variant of capitalism) would lead to tyranny and serfdom in a very short order, but apparently a lot of left-wing people still get misty-eyed at the notion of ideal communism. Communism is only utopian if and only if you see inequality as being absolutely necessary and a permanent upper class must necessarily exist for all practical purposes. the jizz taxi posted:Also the material circumstances of the French Terror were very different from those of the Bolshevik Revolution, so I'm not quite sure why you're drawing this particular parallel. They both took flight in a very, very similar political climate. There are plenty of similarities you can draw. Both had failing, incompetent ancient monarchies that dragged their heels through the entire process political reform. Both underwent radicalization in the presence of an international crisis.
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Jun 5, 2015 13:36
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Morroque posted:Even a very expensive centre of learning like a public university still has its silos and echo chambers. Given the relative prevalence of fierce ideologies in both in the humanities and in economics-based business schools, each of which reliant on axiomatic idioms passed down through a tradition of some kind, education cannot erase authoritarianism but can only redirect it at best. The authoritarian impulse is still there to some degree, but even in a completely secular system it would just find whatever replacement to Christianity or the dominant religion is available and weave a new grand narrative out of that instead. I think the best analysis may be that mental and physical health both make you less vulnerable to these kinds of ideologies. So the viral metaphor works on that level also. Healthy diet and exercise isn't a vaccine but it still helps.
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Jun 5, 2015 15:33
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Job Truniht posted:Communism is only utopian if and only if you see inequality as being absolutely necessary and a permanent upper class must necessarily exist for all practical purposes. Is this a typo or am I misreading? The whole point of communism is that it eliminates class. And the problem with communism really is that it hasn't been applied properly as it's spelled out on paper. In order for "real" communism to work, everyone has to agree to it. For that to work and remain stable, that agreement needs to happen organically, not at gunpoint or through fear and terror and mass murder. The thing is that humanity still sucks and most people are still selfish pieces of poo poo who will gently caress others over for their own gain. Humans aren't socially or ethically evolved enough yet to practice on-paper communism. Hell, as a species we're barely fit to govern ourselves in any way, shape, or form. Look at who we elect and look at the people who are the most active voters.
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Jun 5, 2015 16:40
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Is the communism discussion really relevant to the thread, particularly since the thread is about PJ's term of art Authoritarian and not the authoritarianism which is generally at issue when discussing communism?
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Jun 5, 2015 16:45
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Pope Guilty posted:Is the communism discussion really relevant to the thread, particularly since the thread is about PJ's term of art Authoritarian and not the authoritarianism which is generally at issue when discussing communism? Not particularly. But you know, boys will be boys.
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Jun 5, 2015 17:18
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Elephant Ambush posted:Is this a typo or am I misreading? The whole point of communism is that it eliminates class. Do you even think before you post? You basically just said "yeah authoritarianism is bad but here's why we should have a nauthoritarian government because we're unfit to govern ourselves" and "equality is calling everyone equally unequal". You guys keep on associating political and economic freedom with a regulated market, which is something that will stop existing this century. e: I'm going to go out on a leg and try to keep this on topic- what do you think people who vote selfishly, based on moral convictions or adherence to some self gratifying ideology? They vote for authoritarians. The people who are in Quiverfull vote for authoritarians, by PJs definition. The people who make up the majority of Christian churches in the US vote authoritarian. Specifically, I refer electing people whose laws specifically target women, minorities, and LBGT for the explicit purposes of turning a government into something that reflects their selfish ways. Job Truniht fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 17:48
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Elephant Ambush posted:Is this a typo or am I misreading? The whole point of communism is that it eliminates class. You're misreading it. When we say a political belief is utopian, that means it's impossible in the world as we know it - 'utopia' literally means 'nowhere'. So they're saying that IF inequality is necessary THEN communism is a pipe dream, which follows directly from the 'whole point of communism' as you put it.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:20
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Finally got some dedicated internet time today so I am going to be catching up and responding to some excellent posts I have missed recently.rudatron posted:What gets me about ACE is just how blatant it is. You could only make it more obviously a skinner box if you basically threw the kids into a literal, human-sized skinner box. A.C.E. is consciously constructed on the principles of the Operant Conditioning theory of Skinner. It is intentionally a Skinner Box for children. Christian Perspectives for Education posted:
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Jun 5, 2015 20:13
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dao Jones posted:Thanks for the great thread Prester John! Authoritarians have been a fascinating concept to me since I read Altmeyer's book (from a goon posting) and I'm glad you are tackling the issue from your own angle. To be honest I think that the "Grand Narrative" may be a key feature of the Authoritarian behavior pattern that does not really exist outside of authoritarian circles. That is to say, the Authoritarian Grand Narrative is a result (or perhaps consequence) of the Inner/Outer Narrative dichotomy and most people simply do not have a comparable Grand Narrative. So your absence of a Grand Narrative isn't what makes you a lazy goofball/non-fanatic.
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Jun 5, 2015 20:18
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Defenestration posted:PJ I'm very interested in this Duggar situation (I'd actually started getting way interested in them a couple weeks before the abuse broke, great timing). I was reading recaps of the show and it all seemed tragically boring with the same narrative over and over (courtship, engagement, marriage, poo poo out kids) being strictly controlled for almost no drama at all. How do you have a house of 19 people and not have drama? How does Jim Bob exercise his authority over all these kids if we don't see him disciplining them to it? It struck me how there were some very obvious narrative threads beneath the surface here that any regular reality show would have exploited the heck out of. (Like why the oldest girl Jana is unmarried and everyone's cinderella babysitting slave, what the family thought of the #freejinger movement, just the plain old interpersonal struggles, etc.) To be honest I am just guessing on the Duggar situation here, (never watched the show, don't presently intend to) but my read is that the children are the victims of a severe clinical Narcissist. I would expect the Father to be a complete full blown Narcissist and to have committed such heinous abuse on his children that whenever "outside people" (as my siblings and I used to refer to anyone not in the cult) are around they are on their best behavior because gently caress KNOWS what monstrous abuse will occur as a consequence of public disobedience. I would also suggest that the eldest daughter is the scapegoat of the family (a more or less universal feature of dysfunctional familes, and especially Narcissistc families) and as a result has been so abused that she is infantile and easily exploited. If her Father is a for real Clinical Narcissist than this has been intentionally done, likely because at a younger age she showed some signs of independence and has been made a public example of to her siblings.
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Jun 5, 2015 20:27
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SnakePlissken posted:PJ, just offhand maybe the single most enduring point in your general theory has been, to me, the idea of a compaction cycle. I hadn't been aware of this particular metaphor before and it has really struck me as a potent one. Whether you originated it or not, I hope it gets its own chapter or something in your book. If the single contribution you or your writing made in the world were to make this idea a mainstream concept (and unfortunately, subsequently abused nearly to the point of ruining it like "meme" has suffered) then you will have done significant good right there.
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Jun 5, 2015 20:30
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Mr. Wynand posted:That was an interesting and enjoyable read, thanks OP. This is fantastic feedback, thank you very much for this. I quite agree with you and will have to seriously rewrite this particular area of my framework. Once again, thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful critique.
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Jun 5, 2015 20:30
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PJ would you view abuse (physical/sexual/mental) as something that is considered necessary for authoritarian families that fall into your grand narrative?
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Jun 5, 2015 20:47
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southpaugh posted:So when the craziness happens, like, the GRAND CONVERGENCE or whatver, what do we think the end result will be ? Bloodshed and War? Or will they burn themselves out in sound and fury? I posted this back on March 28th for reference. Prester John posted:Let us consider for a moment "Narrative Convergence" and the Inner Narrative of several easily identified Authoritarian group clusters. (Obviously there are exceptions to every group cluster, these are broad trends, not perfect descriptions of every single person involved in such groups.) I feel that once the Inner Narrative's of various groups are understood it becomes very easy to see where common ground will be found between these groups. Through the Compaction Cycle as well as the need for allies, alliances will be forged as Narrative's Converge around the outlines of the Grand Narrative. Note the "We are on the verge of a 2nd Civil War." bit. That is really critical. I would say at this point that since posting that on March 28th events have progressed more or less in line with what my Authoritarian framework predicts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxfXHsX-2wI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1N3zOqzNM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eaUQXo02bI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOQjKnLdk4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HelVytbvZRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqkliyiaIas Really, each and every one of those videos should be viewed. That said- -I don't know how far this will go or where the Compaction Cycle will eventually drive these groups too. No matter what, we are going to witness a public outpouring of incredibly irrational behavior between now and November 2016, with a significant accelerant being the pending SCOTUS decision on Gay Marriage. The real question is, will this result in some groups becoming violent? Honestly, I don;t know. That is the realm of prophecy, and I am just doing trend analysis here. Perhaps this all burns itself out after some dramatic displays of public lunacy, and that is frankly the best-case scenario. Worst case scenario would be the emergence of a sort of mass psychosis, a shared delusion by some of these groups that they are in fact part of a new Civil War. I think the worst thing that could happen right now is that the next Bundy Ranch showdown (and there *WILL* be at least one more such showdown between an armed mob and the federal government over completely loving baffling reasons) ends with a pile of dead insurgents. In that case a wide variety of Authoritarian groups would react like they just heard the Trumpets of Heaven, and they will attack. Potentially dozens of such groups could start carrying out violent acts in accordance with the dictates of their own Inner Narratives. Their targets would be anyone viewed as an outsider, miscreant, agent of the NWO/Fed/Satan/Reptilians, or otherwise colluding with an enemy of the groups Inner Narrative. Absolute worst case scenario would be the emergence of genuine home grown American terrorism, courtesy the sociopathic arrogance of the GOP. Edit: Here is Tom Delay pledging "Civil Disobedience" if the SCOTUS "dares to rule against marriage". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2ymz_S50QQ Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 21:12
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Prester John posted:and there *WILL* be at least one more such showdown between an armed mob and the federal government over completely loving baffling reasons In other news, this morning's period of light will be followed by a period of dark, beginning sometime this evening.
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Jun 5, 2015 22:33
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