Authoritarians and Politics

[consentingadult]

@Alonzo: like I wrote a little while ago on my social science blog: "For millions of years the Earth has been a battlefield of territorial drives, and the winner takes all. Learn to live with it."

To put it differently: there is, in itself, nothing morally wrong with what some white Europeans did in centuries past. Your comment is nothing more than a mere social construct that probably serves your own interests. You cannot fight racism, which is a mechanism based on invalid social constructs, by replacing those social constructs with other invalid social constructs. (ETA: invalid in an epistemological way, for even an untrue social construct can be effective in accomplishing certain goals and as such be evolutionary valid).

So how do we arrive at valid insights about current day racism and how to overcome it? We do by creating a historiographic understanding of history first. And you do that by leaving out value judgments about that history, for these are necessarily projections of current cultural norms onto historical events.

17th century white Europeans didn't feel they did anything wrong when they bought slaves in Africa. Neither did some 17th century African tribes feel they did anything wrong when they sold Africans from other tribes to white Europeans. Neither did the Arabs that held millions of Europeans as slaves. Norms were different in those days.

Todays norms are pretending that we live in a world of social equality, which is obviously not the case, and the historic reasons for that are obvious. Today's cultural norms should be applied to today only. But in which way?

Your very selective reframing of history is reducing all white people, and the history of white people, to a stereotype, very much how like some white people reduce all black people (or people of other skin colors) to stereotypes, or how some Chinese people reduce all non-Chinese to stereotypes by calling them barbarians, etc.etc.. Your framing will not lead to an end to racism, it is creating a new one in its place, or besides it. Counterattacks such as yours will only have the effect of institutional racism going underground, become more subtly and skillfully camouflaged, and will set back disenfranchised people even more then they already are. Because even for the most co-operative low RWA Delta in the world, Earth is still a battlefield of territorial drives, and the winners take all. Make no mistake about it: low RWA and high RWA, in the end they are both biological strategies, and situational circumstances will determine which one works best in any scenario. In the original post by Adam Strange I already perceive what I consider to be a bias by the researcher.

One thing I have learned long, long ago: if someone does something wrong, disapprove of the behavior, do not disapprove of the person. If you express your disapproval of the person instead of their behavior, your relationship with that person will break down, and nothing will be accomplished after that. This doesn't just apply to problems with racism, but to all social interaction. Unless, of course, you are seeking to eradicate your perceived opponents and take their place. Earth has been a battlefield of territorial drives for millions of years, and the winner takes all.

[marooned]

@Alonzo: like I wrote a little while ago on my social science blog: "For millions of years the Earth has been a battlefield of territorial drives, and the winner takes all. Learn to live with it."

The problem is some of us don't want to live this way, and if enough of the people who insist the world can only be this uber competition where we screw each other over in the fight to be top dog would start to understand it's only one mode of behavior available to us (that we have a choice), then the world would become less this way. It's frustrating when you can see we could build more of a utopia out of this place, but we can't because our great stupid need to self-sabotage overrides everything. We have enough for everyone still (just barely), we still have a chance, and we are screwing it up royally as a global "collective."

I've said this before in the chat, but basically this paper's definition of "authoritarian" is misleading. They only call someone "authoritarian" if they use their authority in an antisocial way. If a ruling group has consensus but behaves coercively towards smaller and less powerful groups, they don't count that as authoritarian because it's eusocial, even though it's coercion by a higher authority.

So when you read the word "authoritarian," your brain hears all the connotations of "autocrat," when in reality they're simply referring to authorities that recklessly break the status quo of the ruling party. If anything, their "authoritarians" are closer to maverick reformers, doing whatever they believe is best for the world even against direct disapproval of the ruling party.

It's a ring of status-quo geezers using word-sophistry to convince you they're the real vanguard of "freedom."

IOW, they are only talking about RWAs (it's not all encompassing--it's a study with limited scope which should be evaluated by that limited scope rather than treating it as though it is all-encompassing). They're looking at the right-wing dictator style, which shouldn't be assumed to account for all of it. LWA is like the Borg in Star Trek in which the collective overrides the individual. The collective has mass conformity, it stresses the diversity of the species it assimilated, but it merges it all into one thing that all are forced to conform to (and in doing such it destroys the very diversity it claims to cherish as without individuals and individual freedom there is no diversity).

[consentingadult]

The problem is some of us don't want to live this way, and if enough of the people who insist the world can only be this uber competition where we screw each other over in the fight to be top dog would start to understand it's only one mode of behavior available to us (that we have a choice), then the world would become less this way. It's frustrating when you can see we could build more of a utopia out of this place, but we can't because our great stupid need to self-sabotage overrides everything. We have enough for everyone still (just barely), we still have a chance, and we are screwing it up royally as a global "collective."

I agree to a certain extent, but I am saying something different, because even in what you are saying, there is an implicit moral bias, preconceived concepts about what is right and wrong, that even you seem to take for granted: from an evolutionary POV, even people who advocate a non-competitive mode of living, are in fact, applying a competitive agenda. Even people who advocate non-violent ways of living, even pacifists, are trying to get the upper hand in life, whatever their rationalizations. To say it figuratively: in a world organized according to the principles of EIIs, it is the SLEs that get the short end of the stick.

In the larger scheme of things, there is no such thing as right or wrong. The fact alone that High RWA people exist, proves that these people serve some biological evolutionary purpose. If they didn't, they wouldn't be there. And why is a Low RWA world where there is no competition and everyone has food on their plates, by implicit definition a better world than a High RWA world where 50% of the worlds capital is owned by a mere 1% of the worlds population?

People talk about being WOKE nowadays. GTFOOF, 99.999% of the world's population is vast asleep.

[marooned]

I agree to a certain extent, but I am saying something different, because even in what you are saying, there is an implicit moral bias, preconceived concepts about what is right and wrong, that even you seem to take for granted: from an evolutionary POV, even people who advocate a non-competitive mode of living, are in fact, applying a competitive agenda. Even people who advocate non-violent ways of living, even pacifists, are trying to get the upper hand in life, whatever their rationalizations. To say it figuratively: in a world organized according to the principles of EIIs, it is the SLEs that get the short end of the stick.

Gosh you come off as condescending (maybe try looking at the log in your own eye more). It's not a hidden bias. It's that I believe the competitive model actually doesn't work, and yes, is morally wrong because it lifts up the few and screws over the many. So yes, I want my view to win over the dog-eat-dog model because that model is stupid. I don't care about couching it in evolutionary terms in this context because doing so is more of the "excuse" about why we must only create dystopia.

In the larger scheme of things, there is no such thing as right or wrong. The fact alone that High RWA people exist, proves that these people serve some biological evolutionary purpose. If they didn't, they wouldn't be there. And why is a Low RWA world where there is no competition and everyone has food on their plates, by implicit definition a better world than a High RWA world where 50% of the worlds capital is owned by a mere 1% of the worlds population?

People talk about being WOKE nowadays. GTFOOF, 99.999% of the world's population is vast asleep.

I don't care about your need to say everything is relative so we should carry on being useless. And great equivocation on the word "woke," which certainly doesn't refer to being "enlightened."

Anyway a world in which the most people suffer the least in my view is always the morally superior world, though I would factor animals in as well. It's because suffering is actually real. I have suffered enough to understand why I wish it on no one.

PS: Obviously this isn't worded precisely enough, as if I asked a genie for this world we'd all be in comas or something - you can't suffer when you're not conscious, etc.

[consentingadult]

Gosh you come off as condescending (maybe try looking at the log in your own eye more). It's not a hidden bias. It's that I believe the competitive model actually doesn't work, and yes, is morally wrong because it lifts up the few and screws over the many. So yes, I want my view to win over the dog-eat-dog model because that model is stupid. I don't care about couching it in evolutionary terms in this context because doing so is more of the "excuse" about why we must only create dystopia.

I don't care about your need to say everything is relative so we should carry on being useless. And great equivocation on the word "woke," which certainly doesn't refer to being "enlightened."

Anyway a world in which the most people suffer the least in my view is always the morally superior world, though I would factor animals in as well. It's because suffering is actually real. I have suffered enough to understand why I wish it on no one.

PS: Obviously this isn't worded precisely enough, as if I asked a genie for this world we'd all be in comas or something - you can't suffer when you're not conscious, etc.

I never said strive for change is useless, I in effect said that strive for change based on unreal social constructs is useless. Think of Rousseau, who taught us that there is no such thing as the Right of the Strongest, there is, in nature, only the Might of the Strongest. Right, in the sense of Law, is a human construct, a set of rules, norms and values that we agree upon through negotiations, preferably in such a way that each and everyone of gets an equal piece of the pie. Right does not descend down from heaven, neither is it given in nature. But this is not how most people think. Instead, they see themselves and their outlook on life as the center of the Universe and they think: "my position is right and the others' position is wrong, and the only way of making this a better world is if we do things my way." I repeat: 99.999% of the worlds population has this attitude, even the most enlightened or woke liberal humanist person. Best of all: Socionics proves this.

And this is exactly why the world will never change, and remains locked into the endless cycle of Samsara. Because every change just comes down to moving around the pawns a bit. Human kind will not escape this cycle of samsara, it is only individual people that can escape the cycle. But those who really do, pay a price: they set themselves apart from the rest of humanity.

This relativism of mine is, contrary to what you think, not a problem, it is THE only way out. My way out is saying: my way is not the right way, neither is yours. Or: yours is totally different than mine, but just as good or bad. Lets negotiate on how to organize society. But like I said, it is not going to happen, the world is locked into Samsara. Human kind usually chooses Might over Right.

ETA: I would like to add one more thing: if you buy a chocolate bar in a supermarket, do you ask yourself if there perhaps is anyone in the world who has suffered in order for you to be able to buy this bar for only 50 cents? I can assure you: I do. Now I rest my case.

[sbbds]

ETA: I would like to add one more thing: if you buy a chocolate bar in a supermarket, do you ask yourself if there perhaps is anyone in the world who has suffered in order for you to be able to buy this bar for only 50 cents? I can assure you: I do. Now I rest my case.

Fucking leftist. I’d only buy myself a vanillabar.