If interested, John Anderson has curated some snackable topic discussions with top conservative thinkers.
The better ones are:
- Rise of Global Citizenship
- Utopian Myth of Equality
- Collectivism vs Liberty
- West’s Self Loathing
Enjoy!
I figured you would say that. If there was no government could you still be Christian? Care about the environment?
Said what?
Yes, but it would very likely get Old Testament really quickly.
Yes. Am I a Zero Carbon proponent? No, the costs are too high. Is my carbon footprint extremely low and getting lower year by year. Yup.
Can you be a progressive with out desiring political control?
Thought the Irony was funny…
I just appreciate how Elon musk so easily manipulates simple minded people for his own profit but without doing anything illegal.
So he buys Twitter while the stock is in a downward trend, crates a stir and the stock price reverses the downward trend.
All just by saying something vague that he knows simple minded right wing media outlets and their moronic audiences will glom onto.
https://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+stock+price&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS882US882&oq=twitter+stock+price&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i131i433i512l2j0i512l7.3831j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
He offered to buy Twitter for about 2X what it was trading at. That immediatle reset Twits value in the free market. That’s pretty simple economics.
Elin has bought Twit yet. Seemingly playing the long game exposing Culture Warriors.
Any explanation on Disney’s declining stock value?
Will this signal to Corporations anything about promotion of Woke policies?
Former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi on Wednesday said companies have “no business” being in politics and has launched a new advocacy coalition to fight woke corporate politics.
“Corporations have no business being on the right or the left because they represent everybody there and their sole job is to build equity for their investors,” Rensi adding he believes progressive policies are negatively affecting shareholders.
I can be a human without being a progressive. I can discuss issues without pointing to current control solution proposals. I think if could discuss the world without getting wrapped up in the current control systems we could get to ideas for better developmental drivers that would be more productive.
1 Like
Disney has had the longest run of any stock I know. I remember in the 7th grade my teacher told us to buy Disney.
The problem with your question about Disney is that it ignores that also companies like MGM are also experiencing a downturn in the same time frame. So no, it’s not about wokeism, but more about people not wanting to go to crowded theaters and crowded theme parks filled with coughing QAnon Karens.
Even before COVD the large Cinema Multiplexes were in trouble financially. They got a boost through COVID with government corporate welfare, but now people just don’t want to sit in theaters and watch movies basically at all.
Elon Musk is using the right’s fear to his financial benefit. That’s all. Just like how he used Gen Z stimulus check money to manipulate Robin Hood trading through social media.
Only really stupid companies would follow the Right wing media and change policies only through the lens of right wing media drum beating, Just look at how that worked for Mike Lidell, who has lost 65 million “exposing culture warriors”.
Obama’s speech is important, in part because it will likely be influential among powerful tech executives. It might be seen as giving new energy to an effort to regulate social media. But the speech is also important for what it did not say. Obama, like others in the Democratic Party and in establishment media circles, is targeting some types of disinformation while remaining strikingly silent about others. There is disinformation that he finds deeply threatening, and there is disinformation he doesn’t seem to notice at all.
Yes, a fantastic article; hope everyone has read it. I did, just yesterday. And I did think of you, @corey-devos, how you have been talking about much of this for several years, thank you.
Haidt writes with a depth of feeling that comes through, influences how one receives the words. At the end of the first long section, when he said “But after Babel, nothing really means anything anymore…” I felt my heart grab and a sob or two escaped. Surprised me, how powerfully those words struck me, dredging up personal sorrow at their truth. I imagine many of us feel this way. Then again when he talked about children and their lack of “free play” outdoors…another grab.
I thought his ending in the section on “Hope after Babel” was a little weak, perhaps reflecting the weakness of the hope. And while he was addressing largely a structural problem, I could have used a little more emphasis here and there on interior development. But by and large, I thought it was a really great great article.
Totally agree. Ryan and I tried to supplement some of that in our most recent Inhabit episode, which will hopefully be posted soon! (The raw version is still up on our YouTube, I think.)
@corey-devos @LaWanna
Linking Babel with the concept of social media got me to thinking about a possible different interpretation of the story of Babel. Perhaps it wasn’t everyone who no longer understood each other - just the ruling elite who did not understand the masses anymore.
Let’s see - they built the tower to reach to the heavens and speak to God. We usually interpret this in our own absurd superiority to mean that they literally wanted to build high enough into the sky to touch the clouds where God lived in his castle. Haha, stupid people lived 5,000 years ago. We are so much smarter now.
What if, instead - it was a building to speak spiritually with God and reach God’s Kingdom not in a physical way, but emotionally and spiritually? And what if they succeeded - and of course then the ruling class and existing Literal Mythic religious leaders could no longer understand them? And, what if the Tower of Babel was not destroyed by the builders, but by some ancient version of Republicans and Democrats who were thrown into existential chaos by the ideas being brought forth by these people who had talked to God and reached God’s kingdom?
Now, back to the 21st century. People were stupid in the 20th century as well. This kind of “Our generation was smarter” is a pretty big problem - especially coming from baby Boomers, who screwed up the entire planet. (The Author was born in 1963, but his ideas in this area are more Boomer than Gen X. There is a split between those comfortable with tech and those uncomfortable with it. That division is maybe 50/50 in Gen X, but 100% of Boomers are uncomfortable with technology, which is the main theme of the article.)
The 1980’s were unbelievably stupid and that stupidity was only surpassed by the 1970’s.
So back to Babel - the people speaking this new language of enlightenment were not understood by the storytellers of the book of Genesis. Maybe the Babelites were discussing AQAL in 6,000 bc - who knows? But the only way the Genesis storytellers understood it was the Babelites were speaking gibberish and God did it to them. So the Genesis storytellers burned babel to the ground and said “God did it”.
Likewise, forward to 2021 - people do not understand the apparent Chaos of social media. They want to control what people say and how they say it - unless it’s them, then they want to say anything even if it’s dangerous or incites violence. So now they are lighting torches to burn down Zuckerberg’s servers and, of course as we look back 20 years from now from our cave just outside the nuclear fallout zone, we will spin the tale for our cute little mutant children of how the Evil Zuckerbergites were destroyed by God.
Another Language Translator survey. Yes, the Like button has enabled monetization of microsegmentation , thereby reinforcing differences.
Note that the Progressive Left are more fringe than any other group. Most island like in ideology, which seemingly fits with what many say about DNC being “Hijacked by radicals”.
Stark differences among typology groups on U.S. global standing. When asked whether the U.S. is superior to all other countries, it is among the greatest countries, or there are other countries that are better, there is relative agreement across six of nine typology groups: About half or more in this very ideologically mixed set of groups – including Establishment Liberals and Populist Right – say the U.S. is among the greatest countries in the world. Faith and Flag Conservatives are the only group in which a majority (69%) says the U.S. stands above all other countries. Conversely, Progressive Left (75%) and Outsider Left (63%) are the only typology groups in which majorities say there are other countries better than the U.S.
Haidt seems to disagree with your hypothesis, and offers what I think is a far more accurate and balanced assessment:
“The stupefying process plays out differently on the right and the left because their activist wings subscribe to different narratives with different sacred values. The “Hidden Tribes” study tells us that the “devoted conservatives” score highest on beliefs related to authoritarianism. They share a narrative in which America is eternally under threat from enemies outside and subversives within; they see life as a battle between patriots and traitors. According to the political scientist Karen Stenner, whose work the “Hidden Tribes” study drew upon, they are psychologically different from the larger group of “traditional conservatives” (19 percent of the population), who emphasize order, decorum, and slow rather than radical change.
Only within the devoted conservatives’ narratives do Donald Trump’s speeches make sense, from his campaign’s ominous opening diatribe about Mexican “rapists” to his warning on January 6, 2021: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The traditional punishment for treason is death, hence the battle cry on January 6: “Hang Mike Pence.” Right-wing death threats, many delivered by anonymous accounts, are proving effective in cowing traditional conservatives, for example in driving out local election officials who failed to “stop the steal.” The wave of threats delivered to dissenting Republican members of Congress has similarly pushed many of the remaining moderates to quit or go silent, giving us a party ever more divorced from the conservative tradition, constitutional responsibility, and reality. We now have a Republican Party that describes a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol as “legitimate political discourse,” supported—or at least not contradicted—by an array of right-wing think tanks and media organizations.
The stupidity on the right is most visible in the many conspiracy theories spreading across right-wing media and now into Congress. “Pizzagate,” QAnon, the belief that vaccines contain microchips, the conviction that Donald Trump won reelection—it’s hard to imagine any of these ideas or belief systems reaching the levels that they have without Facebook and Twitter.
The Democrats have also been hit hard by structural stupidity, though in a different way. In the Democratic Party, the struggle between the progressive wing and the more moderate factions is open and ongoing, and often the moderates win. The problem is that the left controls the commanding heights of the culture: universities, news organizations, Hollywood, art museums, advertising, much of Silicon Valley, and the teachers’ unions and teaching colleges that shape K–12 education. And in many of those institutions, dissent has been stifled: When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.
Liberals in the late 20th century shared a belief that the sociologist Christian Smith called the “liberal progress” narrative, in which America used to be horrifically unjust and repressive, but, thanks to the struggles of activists and heroes, has made (and continues to make) progress toward realizing the noble promise of its founding. This story easily supports liberal patriotism, and it was the animating narrative of Barack Obama’s presidency. It is also the view of the “traditional liberals” in the “Hidden Tribes” study (11 percent of the population), who have strong humanitarian values, are older than average, and are largely the people leading America’s cultural and intellectual institutions.”
Just looking at the survey results scatter plot. Also agree usually with most of Haidt’s observations.
Over time we will reach clarity on using the term “Liberal”. By any classic definition the avant gard or Progressive Left is clearly anti-Liberal.
Thats a truckload of Haidt quoting… Do you consider Haidt a particularly Integral thinker?
All from the article I shared above, which I think was absolutely fantastic, and again, resonates so much with many of my own observations over the years.
Is he a “particularly integral thinker”? I don’t know, Ken seems to think he is, more or less. I’d say he is likely demonstrating teal cognition, yes, even though I’m not sure how familiar he is with any of Ken’s work (which is not a prerequisite for teal cognition, of course, it’s just the best map for that territory, in my view.) He appears to be capable of criticizing green from a post-green position, rather than from a pre-green position, which is always a good sign of integral thinking.
Ken does have some criticisms about some of Haidt’s popular work, however, such as his “moral foundations” including some facets of morality that are particularly important to the amber stage — which means that, ironically, scoring higher in these lines often signifies lower overall vertical moral development. Which isn’t to say that is a bad thing — I love me some healthy amber moral foundations! — but does skew many interpretations of the data. It appears to me that Haidt is enacting more of a “horizontal” model of morality, consisting of moral expressions that are each correlated with a particular stage, rather than a vertical/developmental model with lines that each grow through multiple stages.
So, while I think Ken’s work could probably uplevel some of Haidt’s thinking, his work is still tremendously valuable (especially if we do our own work to synthesize it with AQAL), and demonstrative of more people naturally finding their way into teal/turquoise territories, regardless of the maps they are using to navigate the space.
West’s War on the West
It’s like a fixation to take a spray can to Da Vinci’s Last Supper, paint remover to a Rothko, flame thrower to Notre Dame Cathedral, or converting a Stradivarius into a rap synth box.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/04/24/the_wests_war_on_the_west_147515.html
Do you actually believe this or is this just a Woke/Counter-Woke game?
Are you implying that this isn’t the case?
What’s your perception?