DocWatts

If your chief problems and concerns are about meeting basic survival needs (escaping wage slavery, attaining financial Independence, finding fulfilling relationships, etc), philosophy probably won't be hugely helpful. Where philosophy does come in useful is where it comes to questions of meaning, self-actualization, and self transcendence. If you're curious about the world, curious about how your mind works, and if lifelong learning is something that's important to you, philosophy can be hugely enriching.

Just something interesting I noticed, after reading a book about Hegel's Absolute Idealism and a book about Vedic metaphysics back to back. I was struck by the similarities between the ontological models of Vedic metaphysics and Hegel's Absolute Idealism. Or to put it another way, my experience reading about the Vedic system was often along the lines of : some of this feels a lot like Hegel. In that both are ontologies of becoming, and that Hegel's use of Spirit and The Absolute feel like analogues of the Gross, Subtle, and Causal domains. So was Hegel directly influenced by these ideas as he was developing his philosophy? His arch-nemesis Schopenhauer made explicit reference to wisdom traditions like Buddhism, yet I've been unable to confirm whether in Hegel's case this was an instance of independent convergence resulting in similiar ideas, or if Hegel was aware of these traditions and incorporated them in to his own model.

For Hegel in particular, while it's fair to say that he was to some degrees a relativist (in that he viewed thought by its very nature as perspectival, and believed that philosophies need to be evaluated from within a socio-cultural context), he was the opposite of a nihilist. That's because for Hegel the universe had a very clear purpose, namely that it was a process of universal consciousness becoming aware of its true nature. And that this happened through a prolonged process of universal consciousness overcoming its own limitations and contradictions.

It's almost akin to a hypothetical scenario where threads about addressing Climate Change are being consistently derailed by a handful of people declaiming that Climate Change is a hoax perpetuated by the liberal media. It's a perspective that's not contributing anything of value, and only serves to drag the quality of discussions around the topic downward.

There are already plenty of 'anything goes' forums to indulge in conspiracy theories and anti-vax hysteria. While there's a reasonable discussion to be had over vaccine mandates, in practice what happens is that threads which start with that intention become debates over whether the vaccines are harmful (they're not) or whether Covid is a big deal (it is). Kudos for Leo for actually using his influence in a responsible way by not letting the forums become a Facebook or 4chan-esque breeding ground for misinformation and conspiricism.

That brings to mind the way in which the British Empire was able to colonize and exploit a region as populated and geographically vast as India, by getting this 'divide and conquer' strategy down to a science. Exacerbate existing ethnic and cultural tensions by playing different groups against one another, thereby getting local leaders to become willing collaborators in the exploitation of thier own country. Really it's not so different with how capitalism is able to keep the working classes divided today, by deliberate efforts to distract and egoicly flatter portions of the working class who feel threatened by evolving social norms.

When I was twelve or thirteen there was probably a week or two when I would have claimed to be the first human being to discover it, but point well taken

@silene It's a difficult problem to be sure, as the inventive structure of global capitalism rewards this sort of economic imperialism by giving a competitive advantage to nations and multinational corporations that are able to exploit developing countries in this way. Short of a transition to an economic system beyond capitalism (whatever that ultimately ends up being), the economic incentives to interfere with the internal development of other countries won't be going away anytime soon. 'Strong' authoritarian governments arguably make the problems of exploitation even worse for developing nations, as the public doesn't have any way to punish thier leaders for corruption and for selling off thier national assets to foreign enteties. At least in a democracy there's a mechanism that the public can use to weigh in on policy decisions (however imperfect that can be in practice). If there's a silver lining, it's that international exploitation does become more difficult to sustain as first world nations develop up the spiral from SD-Orange to SD-Green, as Green is the first stage that where these types of exploitative practices start to become socially unacceptable. Democratization efforts which bring public scrutiny to the clandestine efforts of multinational corporations, and regulations which limit thier ability to set national policy agendas is probably the best we can hope for under the prevailing socio-economic paradigm.

That's just generally going to be the case whatever the prevailing metaphysical paradigm is though, right? That is, because the prevailing implicit paradigm is always going to be constructed to some degree to fit the needs of the society. Industrialization needed an implicit materialist paradigm to get off the ground, in the same way that earlier societies needed implicit non-materialist paradigms to maintain and justify earlier hierarchical forms of social organization. (That's not to say that materialist industrialism isn't also hierarchical, just that the prevailing meta-ideology co-evolves with societal structures. And in practice the two are interdependent).

@Fleetinglife Russia’ wasn’t a repeat of Chile – it was Chile in reverse order: Pinochet staged a coup, dissolved the institutions of democracy and then imposed shock therapy; Yeltsin imposed shock therapy in a democracy, then could defend it only by dissolving democracy and staging a coup. Both scenarios earned enthusiastic support from the West.’ ‘For the country’s oligarchs and foreign investors, only one cloud loomed on the horizon: Yeltsin’s plummeting popularity. The effects of the economic program were so brutal for the average Russian, and the progress was so self-evidently corrupt, that his approval ratings fell to single digits. If Yeltsin was pushed from office, whoever replaced him would likely put a halt to Russia’s adventure in extreme capitalism. Even more worrying for the oligarchs and the ‘reformers,’ there would be a strong case for renationalizing many of the assets that had been handed out under such unconstitutional political circumstances.' ‘By 1998, more than 80 percent of Russian farms had gone bankrupt, and roughly seventy thousand state factories had closed, creating an epidemic of unemployment. In 1989, before shock therapy, 2 million people in the Russian Federation were living in poverty, on less than $4 a day. By the time the shock therapists had administered their ‘bitter medicine’ in the mid-nineties, 74 million Russians were living below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. That means that Russia’s ‘economic reforms’ can claim credit for the impoverishment of 72 million people in only eight years. ‘The movement that Milton Friedman launched in the 1950s is best understood as an attempt by multinational capital to recapture the highly profitable, lawless frontier that Adam Smith, the intellectual forefather of today’s neoliberals, so admired – but with a twist. Rather than journeying through Smith’s ‘savage and barbarous nations’ where there was no Western law (no longer a practical option), this movement set out to systematically dismantle existing laws and regulations to re-create that earlier lawlessness.’ - Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine (2007)

Naomi Klein wrote an entire book about this practice, but in short what happened in post Soviet Russia bears similarities to how Western countries acting at the behest of multinational corporations have opportunisticly taken advantage of crises to coerce nations in desperate financial and political circumstances. This is done in order to push through pro-corporate policies such as Free Trade and Privatization, at the expense of the citizens of that country. It's a way of interfering with the internal development of other nations to make them more profitable environments for multinational corporations to operate in. In Russia's case, the country was in terrible need of international assistance after the collapse of the Soviet Union. International aid was tied to accepting neoliberal market reforms that were primarily beneficial for multinational corporations, and further destabilized the country (something that both the Russian oligarchs and Putin took advantage of). The country would have been far better off using protectionist policies to ease the transition to a market economy, similiar to what countries like South Korea used to achieve affluence That's of course not to excuse Russian leadership during this era, which had varying degrees of incompetence, corruption, and naivety at the proposed 'reforms' being suggested by Free Market think tanks and the international business community.

@Happy Lizard Here's an excellent write up on Game Denial from Emil Ejneer Friis (writing under the pseudonym of Hanzi Frienacht). It's an excerpt from a book called The Listening Society, about Metamodernism, which is the meta-paradigm that comes after post-modernism. The book builds upon models like Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber's Four Quadrants model to construct a Yellow Metamodern paradigm. I'd highly recommend the book. Yet, many of us frequently fall victim to what I call “game denial”: the inability to perceive, or a negligence of, the logical and behavioral rules that regulate human relations. Game denial is when you ignore or “wish away” certain uncomfortable truths regarding human relations and how reality works. Or simply when you deny the realities of life and forcefully impose your own “ought” upon what “is”. https://metamoderna.org/game-denial/

In the case of Russia specifically, economic imperialism by Western governments and multinational corporations bear at least some responsibility for the difficulties faced by the short lived Russian democracy that emerged during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The economic 'shock therapy' adopted in good faith by the naive and desperate Russian government at the behest of multinational corporations operating under the paradigm of neo-liberalism proceeded to economically devestate a stagnating country that just went through a major crisis. This 'shock therapy' basically involved a rapid shift to neo-liberalism and free trade, and gave multinationals free reign to interfere with the development of a country whose best interests would have been better served by adopting a protectionist model until it was on a more equal footing with the West (similiar to how South Korea successfully developed in to an affluent country). Granted this is far from the only reason why democracy proved unstable in post Soviet Russia, but the transition from a crumbling authoritarian system to a parliamentary democracy is already difficult enough without external actors being given a free reign to destabilize your country.

Off the top of my head: Game Denial. Not understanding how development works. Lack of compassion / empathy for the other Tier-1 Stages Lack of pragmatism, and not taking current Institutions and developmental conditions in to account. Viewing social problems through a reductionist class paradigm (ie some forms of Marxism). Overly relativistic. A return to magical thinking (aspects of some New Ages spiritualities). Elevationism, and not understanding the pre/trans fallacy

One can give due credit to the brilliant engineers and scientists working at Tesla and Space X for pioneering innovations that fulfill a societal need, without necessarily having to simp for Musk nor for the toxic elements of capitalism that he embodies. It's not even that difficult distinction to make.

The problem with Conspiracy Theories is that it's a very un-systemic and non-dialectical way of looking at the world. It posits that problems in the world are the result of the actions of bad people working behind the scenes, rather than as systemic problems with systemic solutions. A result of this is a very unsophisticated way of looking at the world, that proposes surface level solutions to problems instead of addressing root causes. Ie: focusing on exposing the nefarious activities of corrupt billionaires, rather than addressing how the underlying incentive structure of capitalism is at cross proposes with democratic ideals and the interests of the public, for example. Furthermore, it's something that's easily weaponized to judge and demonize whoever the Conspiracy Theorist places in the role of 'The Other'. At the extreme end of this, weaponized conspiricism was a motivating psychological factor behind Nazism and The Holocaust. At the less extreme end, it's a form of gossip which is a distraction from actual solutions to problems that the world is facing. Of course Leo already covered all of this in his Conspiracy video, but it's human nature to form egoic attachments to one's pet theories so the defensive backlash on threads like this really isn't much of a surprise.

The closest thing to Yellow political parties / candidates are Process Oriented political parties like Volt, something that can only be found right now in some of the progressive Social Democracies of Europe. A Process Oriented political party is one that seeks to improve the level of public discourse by consensus building and by a process of co-determination to discover what the best political solution to any given issue may be. Naturally a high degree of social solidarity within a mature Green democracy is pretty much a prerequisite for this sort of system to function, which is why they're only starting to appear in the most developed countries in the world. Green Social Democracy v2.0 is another way to think of these sorts of parties. https://metamoderna.org/the-danish-alternative-a-party-about-nothing/

There's also an important difference between personality traits that are ego-centonic and those that are ego-distonic. The difference is that ego-centonic traits are those that are parsimonious with your values, and are congruent with who you think you are as a person. They're things you like about yourself and identify with. Ego-distonic traits on the other hand are things that you don't like about yourself and wish to change, because they conflict with who you think you are (or would like to be) as a person. While a self described 'race realist' like Richard Spencer or Ben Shapiro's racism is ego-centonic because it's not seen as a problem, what you're describing is obviously an ego-distonic trait. The way you fix that is to unlearn ways that you've been conditioned towards pre-reflectively 'Othering' people with a different ethnic or cultural background. One of the ways that you begin to solve this is by positive face to face interactions with the group that you're Othering. Is there a point of contact you can find (such as a social activity you enjoy doing) that would bring you in to contact with people outside of your own background? For a lot of people college serves this function, but really it could be anything: sports, dancing, music, board games, social activism, etc. Finding ways to bond with individuals from other backgrounds will begin to dissolve those pre-reflective judgements and make them untenable over time.

Canada hasn't been listed as a backsliding democracy, for one. If the idea of a coup attempt taking place in Canada sounds ludicrous, then you enjoy a level of social and political stability that's no longer taken for granted in the 'States. The lived reality of the political landscape here involves everyone outside of the far Right trying to forestall the collapse of democracy over the next four to ten years. So yeah, things are quite bit worse here than in Canada.

@vizual If I'm understanding you correctly you're not opposed to social programs that aim to raise the socio-economic floor, and that everyone has the right to a decent standard of life. But have you perhaps considered that forcing people to give birth who aren't emotionally or financially able to support a child might be contributing to cyclical trends of generational poverty and emotional neglect/abuse? And that people who grow up in abusive or neglectful circumstances are more more likely to harm other people as a result? You mention parental responsibility. Does that extend to giving the parents the right to terminate a pregnancy if its determined to be particularly dangerous to the mother? Or if the doctors can tell that a pregnancy is unviable? If not, are there any circumstances where abortion should be allowed? You also mention that sex education mostly doesn't help. What in your experience leads you to believe that this is indeed the case (since the overwhelming weight of evidence suggests otherwise)?

@vizual If that's your position, are you also fully supportive of funding universal health care, universal child care, paid family leave, high quality public education, and social welfare programs for struggling families? Do you support comprehensive sex education and easy access to contraception to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies? Are these things also important to you, or do you see society's obligation to the well being of children end once an infant has left it's mother's womb?

Mask wearing is something that's been culturally accepted in Japan long before Covid. They're also a much less pathologically individualistic society than a place like the US, where grown men and women have been throwing temper tantrums in public over having to weak a mask before going in to a store. The US still has quite a bit of SD-Red in it (as evidenced by the appeal of Trump), which is where a lot of the anti-mask and anti-vaccine sentiment is coming from.

In some ways he can be likened to someone like a Henry Ford who was responsible for the propagation of technological advancements that contributed to the development of society, but was also highly problematic figure who advocated for some repulsive social and political ideas. Society needs to transition to electric vehicles and Tesla has played an important part in kicking that off. And under the capitalist system that exists, venture capital is how that happens (not saying this is ideal, but just stating the facts). So one can give him some credit for bankrolling industries with obvious social utility, without giving him a pass on the ways he's been socially irresponsible by preaching that the rich don't need to pay thier fair share of taxes and that society isn't obligated to help the less well off.

Or to put it another way, the radicalization of the American right wing has furnished Trump with what what are essentially contemporary brown shirts. Scary stuff.