So, here's the 10,000$ question: were all the psychologically unhealthy people born, or made? I am seeing two lines of thought here.
Leonard in "Illiberal Reformers" noted that the early 20th century progressives were nearly all the children of preachers. He argued that they kept the reforming, fire and brimstone religiosity of their parents, but just changed religion to the Church of the Technocratic State. (I am paraphrasing, possibly too much.)
Then you have Haidt and LukieIcantrememberhisname in "The Coddling of the American Mind" arguing that we are actively breaking our kids' brains via safetyism and all manner of learned helplessness sorts of stuff. I can't think of how to summarize it well.
Eric Hoffer's work in "True Believers" seems to tie them together, with his point that mass movements like Communism or Fascism tend to attract those who are unfit for the state of the world and unhappy with their lives, and so try to drown themselves in a movement. That fits both crazies and helpless, whether born or made. It does leave open the question of why one sort of mass movement is more popular than another; why has the crazy left exploded while the crazy right is very minor in the US?
Gah, too much to think of in a response, maybe too much for just one post.
I don't know that I would call the abortion clinic bombings of the 90's of a type with the massive rioting of late (unless you are referring to something else I can't recall). Small scale violence always crops up, if only as a matter of small scale crazy. Abortion clinics, shooting a politician, Boston Marathon bombing, one or a few crazy people at a time. I can't think of an Antifa analogue or BLM. Then again, I didn't have cable till ~99 so I might have missed something.
Thank you sir! I've had it stewing on the back burner for a while, but it seemed like a good time to finish it up.
I am curious, do you have a clear idea of how the socialists could stop misapplying their tools to stop eating themselves? I have been trying to think of a limiting principle for them, but damned if I can come up with anything other than "give up this group nonsense."
Ah that makes a lot of sense. Getting them out of the need for a mass movement to assuage their unhappiness. I was thinking more of some limiting principle that moderate leftists could apply to put the brakes on their extreme elements. It does worry me a bit that the left philosophy does not seem to be self moderating.
Hmmm the autism point is food for thought... I need to ponder that a bit.
I think the left, moderate and extreme, has a bit of a parallel with Islam, moderate and extreme. In both it seems that the extremists are the philosophically more consistent ones, so the moderates are only moderates because it is convenient and not because they can point out "Hey, you extremists are going to far." I think that is why both tend to toss off so many radicals in their adherents that the mainstream members can't really bring themselves to wholly repudiate because it would mean repudiating their own philosophy.
The right doesn't have that problem, it seems to me, largely because it focuses more on negative rights and freedoms of the individual, so extremists that want to inflict their preferences tend to get rejected. It is very hard to be consistent around freedom and force people to do what you want.
I think that's just it, it isn't self sustaining, but continues until it has killed its host, or at least done so much damage that the host violently rejects it. The woke left doesn't seem to be able to create replacement institutions, just occupy current ones and burn them out. Wokedipus doesn't get a wife and start a family, he gets inside his mom and then everyone dies.
Leftist autophagy is nothing all that new; they've been notorious for that from the beginning. Monty Python was poking fun at it in Life of Brian back in the 70s. Despite that inherent fractiousness, they've continued rolling over everyone in their path, so it's clearly not that much of a handicap.
A lot of balance could be restored if the right simply adopted a reciprocal principle of not automatically denouncing right-wing radicals. "If you send Antifa we'll send the Proud Boys" would calm things down a lot in the long run. Arguments along the lines of "You can talk to us moderates or to those nice lunatics with the rifles" tend to be very effective; that was basically MLK Jr's schtick.
A lot of it comes down to moral confidence. Not only does the left not have a limiting moral principle, it also denounces the right as immoral; worse, conservatives tend to accept this frame. "We want the same thing you do, just by different methods." Regaining balance requires the right to have the moral confidence to denounce the left as immoral when its behavior is, in fact, immoral ... which is usually. And naturally, to enforce moral standards on the right, as well ... but that is much less frequently a problem.
Until the majority of the right is able to move back to a based position that one man sucking another man's dick is not something to be proud of, and individualism is more important than group identity, we will continue our descent into madness.
Woke Inc. is full of toddler minded adult children and society has been acting like a mother who can't bring herself to enact a modicum of discipline on the child. It won't limit itself, only become an uncontrollable monster.
The only thing that will check this monster is widespread economic hardship or a hostile takeover from a nation that doesn't fly the rainbow flag over their barracks. Spoiled children don't exist during famine or war.
So, here's the 10,000$ question: were all the psychologically unhealthy people born, or made? I am seeing two lines of thought here.
Leonard in "Illiberal Reformers" noted that the early 20th century progressives were nearly all the children of preachers. He argued that they kept the reforming, fire and brimstone religiosity of their parents, but just changed religion to the Church of the Technocratic State. (I am paraphrasing, possibly too much.)
Then you have Haidt and LukieIcantrememberhisname in "The Coddling of the American Mind" arguing that we are actively breaking our kids' brains via safetyism and all manner of learned helplessness sorts of stuff. I can't think of how to summarize it well.
Eric Hoffer's work in "True Believers" seems to tie them together, with his point that mass movements like Communism or Fascism tend to attract those who are unfit for the state of the world and unhappy with their lives, and so try to drown themselves in a movement. That fits both crazies and helpless, whether born or made. It does leave open the question of why one sort of mass movement is more popular than another; why has the crazy left exploded while the crazy right is very minor in the US?
Gah, too much to think of in a response, maybe too much for just one post.
I don't know that I would call the abortion clinic bombings of the 90's of a type with the massive rioting of late (unless you are referring to something else I can't recall). Small scale violence always crops up, if only as a matter of small scale crazy. Abortion clinics, shooting a politician, Boston Marathon bombing, one or a few crazy people at a time. I can't think of an Antifa analogue or BLM. Then again, I didn't have cable till ~99 so I might have missed something.
Thank you sir! I've had it stewing on the back burner for a while, but it seemed like a good time to finish it up.
I am curious, do you have a clear idea of how the socialists could stop misapplying their tools to stop eating themselves? I have been trying to think of a limiting principle for them, but damned if I can come up with anything other than "give up this group nonsense."
Ah that makes a lot of sense. Getting them out of the need for a mass movement to assuage their unhappiness. I was thinking more of some limiting principle that moderate leftists could apply to put the brakes on their extreme elements. It does worry me a bit that the left philosophy does not seem to be self moderating.
Hmmm the autism point is food for thought... I need to ponder that a bit.
I think the left, moderate and extreme, has a bit of a parallel with Islam, moderate and extreme. In both it seems that the extremists are the philosophically more consistent ones, so the moderates are only moderates because it is convenient and not because they can point out "Hey, you extremists are going to far." I think that is why both tend to toss off so many radicals in their adherents that the mainstream members can't really bring themselves to wholly repudiate because it would mean repudiating their own philosophy.
The right doesn't have that problem, it seems to me, largely because it focuses more on negative rights and freedoms of the individual, so extremists that want to inflict their preferences tend to get rejected. It is very hard to be consistent around freedom and force people to do what you want.
I think that's just it, it isn't self sustaining, but continues until it has killed its host, or at least done so much damage that the host violently rejects it. The woke left doesn't seem to be able to create replacement institutions, just occupy current ones and burn them out. Wokedipus doesn't get a wife and start a family, he gets inside his mom and then everyone dies.
Leftist autophagy is nothing all that new; they've been notorious for that from the beginning. Monty Python was poking fun at it in Life of Brian back in the 70s. Despite that inherent fractiousness, they've continued rolling over everyone in their path, so it's clearly not that much of a handicap.
A lot of balance could be restored if the right simply adopted a reciprocal principle of not automatically denouncing right-wing radicals. "If you send Antifa we'll send the Proud Boys" would calm things down a lot in the long run. Arguments along the lines of "You can talk to us moderates or to those nice lunatics with the rifles" tend to be very effective; that was basically MLK Jr's schtick.
A lot of it comes down to moral confidence. Not only does the left not have a limiting moral principle, it also denounces the right as immoral; worse, conservatives tend to accept this frame. "We want the same thing you do, just by different methods." Regaining balance requires the right to have the moral confidence to denounce the left as immoral when its behavior is, in fact, immoral ... which is usually. And naturally, to enforce moral standards on the right, as well ... but that is much less frequently a problem.
Until the majority of the right is able to move back to a based position that one man sucking another man's dick is not something to be proud of, and individualism is more important than group identity, we will continue our descent into madness.
Woke Inc. is full of toddler minded adult children and society has been acting like a mother who can't bring herself to enact a modicum of discipline on the child. It won't limit itself, only become an uncontrollable monster.
The only thing that will check this monster is widespread economic hardship or a hostile takeover from a nation that doesn't fly the rainbow flag over their barracks. Spoiled children don't exist during famine or war.