Our species broadly is far more concerned with narratives and stories than reality. This is how our brains work on a very fundamental level.
Yep. Thanks for mentioning this. It’s really the root of it. The existing social structure is reinforcing/escalating our worst psychological biases. The opposite of what many of us think it should be doing. At least for me… going to school was all about deprogramming all the emotional bias bullshit that my parents and home-town idiots I grew up with believed. The internet also helped a lot with that. It was about getting outside of the bubble.
But it seem around 10 years ago this all shifted. and now education and internet is all about reinforcing those biases. I meet so many ‘well-educated’ people that have such provincial/delusional beliefs about the world now… it’s terrifying. And this is folks on my ‘own side’ of leftism/liberalism… I can only imagine it’s equal/worse among the right. A huge uptick in delusional and magical thinking, and people using their education to justify their crazy thoughts… instead of using their education to dismantle/prevent their crazy thoughts.
I’m not so sure good policy is the way to do it… but I do know from political experience that good policy is something EVERYONE hates. Precisely because it doesn’t benefit them exclusively.
I’m not so sure good policy is the way to do it… but I do know from political experience that good policy is something EVERYONE hates. Precisely because it doesn’t benefit them exclusively.
Our problem we’re butting up against is this, that as individuals we are resistant to the bitter medicine we know will help us. So we have no choice but to elect leaders we know will trick the population in some way, but we never know what’s a trick and what’s a power grab for personal gain. (Present admin excluded, they’re a painfully transparent consequence of our society abandoning community and education.)
But we had a social democracy in the US that lasted more than 200 years. That’s not a bad run, it’s proof of concept. Maybe the USA will splinter and fracture, but from that will come new ideas, new areas of democratic progress and new alliances and power groups who now know that such a thing is possible.
I don’t think we’re going to have a unified world, at least not in our lives and certainly not with our existing social systems, but war and disease and atrocities broadly are on a decline across the globe. It may spike again in places and at times, but despite that we are living in an age of unprecedented peace and prosperity, that shows that something we’re doing is working, but we have to manage and maintain it by resisting apathy and nihilism. If we stop seeing the positives and stop caring, we backslide to raiders looting our houses and raping and pillaging our communities.
History shows us people only learn to do the right thing after things have gone horrible horrible wrong.
we had a worldwide depression and war that uttered in 80 years of peace. we will have another one before things can truly improve. the current generations are all far too removed from the consequences of their actions.
Yep. Thanks for mentioning this. It’s really the root of it. The existing social structure is reinforcing/escalating our worst psychological biases. The opposite of what many of us think it should be doing. At least for me… going to school was all about deprogramming all the emotional bias bullshit that my parents and home-town idiots I grew up with believed. The internet also helped a lot with that. It was about getting outside of the bubble.
But it seem around 10 years ago this all shifted. and now education and internet is all about reinforcing those biases. I meet so many ‘well-educated’ people that have such provincial/delusional beliefs about the world now… it’s terrifying. And this is folks on my ‘own side’ of leftism/liberalism… I can only imagine it’s equal/worse among the right. A huge uptick in delusional and magical thinking, and people using their education to justify their crazy thoughts… instead of using their education to dismantle/prevent their crazy thoughts.
I’m not so sure good policy is the way to do it… but I do know from political experience that good policy is something EVERYONE hates. Precisely because it doesn’t benefit them exclusively.
Our problem we’re butting up against is this, that as individuals we are resistant to the bitter medicine we know will help us. So we have no choice but to elect leaders we know will trick the population in some way, but we never know what’s a trick and what’s a power grab for personal gain. (Present admin excluded, they’re a painfully transparent consequence of our society abandoning community and education.)
But we had a social democracy in the US that lasted more than 200 years. That’s not a bad run, it’s proof of concept. Maybe the USA will splinter and fracture, but from that will come new ideas, new areas of democratic progress and new alliances and power groups who now know that such a thing is possible.
I don’t think we’re going to have a unified world, at least not in our lives and certainly not with our existing social systems, but war and disease and atrocities broadly are on a decline across the globe. It may spike again in places and at times, but despite that we are living in an age of unprecedented peace and prosperity, that shows that something we’re doing is working, but we have to manage and maintain it by resisting apathy and nihilism. If we stop seeing the positives and stop caring, we backslide to raiders looting our houses and raping and pillaging our communities.
History shows us people only learn to do the right thing after things have gone horrible horrible wrong.
we had a worldwide depression and war that uttered in 80 years of peace. we will have another one before things can truly improve. the current generations are all far too removed from the consequences of their actions.