DocWatts

@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.

Democracies don't just collapse overnight. Every collapse that's happened was proceeded by a period of years to decades where democracy was ceasing to function in a normal or healthy manner. And the truth is that democracy has been on the decline in America for some time now. The incentive structure of capitalism is at cross purposes with democracy, and unlike the Social Democracies of Europe the US has been unable to prevent political system capture by oligarchs who were able to roll back much of the New Deal and force austerity measures on the public. In addition to the meta-paradigm shift (and resulting ego-backlash) towards Green, I don't think it's any coincidence that the resurgence in fascism is also taking place amid a half century decline in living standards for most Americans. I have to think that a lot of the resentment that's fueling the resurgence in white-nationalism is a result of a large portion of white Americans being subjected to the same sorts of economic deprivation that communities of color have experienced throughout the history of this country. Material deprivation and economic anxiety provides fuel for Bad Actors to channel feelings of anger and resentment towards societal 'elites'. Capitalizing upon these feelings, they then work within the existing democratic system to garner support among a portion of the public to end democracy. The reason that this is possible is due to widespread feelings that existing institutions have become corrupted and lack legitimacy in the eyes of the public, which is the kernal of truth that fascism exploits for the purposes of amassing power. What we're seeing right now is exactly how one would expect fascism to work if and when it came to America. Most people have too restricted a notion of what fascism is (ie Nazi Germany), not realizing that fascism adapts itself to the conditions of the society it finds itself in. It sells itself as a return to a 'traditional' way of life towards a segment of the population that's feeling threatened by changes happening in the society, and this necessarily will look different in America than it did in Germany, Italy, or Spain.

My own perspective is that Hegel's dialectical system was superior to Marx's in almost every way. That's not to say that Marx doesn't apply dialectics to good effect for the purposes of deconstructing oppressive hierarchies, just that hitching it to materialist assumptions makes it a far more limited tool and also introduces the likelihood of commiting epistemic errors.

I can envision communism working quite well on a small scale for communities that are under the Dunbar number. The problem comes with scaling that sort of system up to work well for a society of millions of people, because it introduces Game Denial which would require changes in human nature to overcome. That's not to deny the validity of Marx's critique of Capitalism. Just that his perspective is true but partial.

That's a little outside my wheelhouse (most of my non-fiction reading these days is stuff like philosophy, science, history, etc) Plenty of people here who would probably be more qualified to answer that, and happy to hand out a few recommendations

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is what you're looking for, as it's a book that explores the epistemic foundations of science. The author's intention is to present a more accurate picture of what science is and how it works, as opposed to misconceptions about science in the popular culture. Among these misconceptions are the notion that science is a collection of facts and theories gradually building towards 'The Truth', similiar to bricks that are laid down by someone who's building a house. Rather, the author demonstrates that the endeavour of science is a dialectic of shifting paradigms. Old theories get tossed out, and differing paradigms see the role of science in differing (often incommensurable) ways. The author also goes in to how a scientific paradigm is formed, how it proceeds under normal conditions, under what conditions it is thrown in to crisis, and how crisis leads to new paradigms. And that this dialectic is ultimately what makes scientific advancement possible. Anyways, hope this helps!

My own perspective is that questions of whether or not ethics is either relative or universalist (a binary), seems like the wrong of way of framing the issue. A better way of framing it is to consider relativism and universalism as a sliding scale, with the question of how relativistic should a workable system of ethics be?

@Fleetinglife Interesting write up and analysis. One of the upcoming books on my reading list is Zizek's Less Than Nothing : Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, which I'm looking forward to. My contention wasn't that Marxism itself was Red (indeed it was a thoroughly Orange, modernist ideology). Just that the conditions of early 20th century Russia where Leninism emerged led quite naturally to a Red/Blue version of Marxism being in the best position to win that power struggle (just in case that wasn't clear from my previous post). My own perspective is that the possibility of internal dissent isn't something unknown to Red, for example the Roman republic had plenty of internal dissent yet was pretty good example of a Red (or a Red/Blue) society. And support for secession by itself doesn't necessarily indicate higher levels of the Spiral. The US civil war is a good demonstration of this, as the sect lower on the spiral was the one pushing for secession so that the institution of slavery could continue to exist. To add to this, from my perspective it seems that Rosa Luxemburg's reservations about secession come from concerns that emerge higher up the Spiral (Orange / Green), rather than allowing allowing secession regardless of the cost it may have on the people living in the seceding territory It was also my understanding that the toleration of national liberation movements had more to do with the view at the time that the Soviet experiment was seen more as a holding action, whose security depended on revolutions toppling capitalist governments in other countries. And that a single Marxist country couldn't survive on its own because the capitalist counties would band together to destroy it (which was true as evidenced by the Civil War, but also a self fulfilling prophesy due to an ideology that was antagonistic towards every other major government in the world). Also, I'm curious if you're familiar with Noam Chomsky's critique of Marx-Leninism, and if so what your thoughts on his critique are? For my own part I agree with his assessment, but if you disagree I'd be curious to hear why.

Concern for the well being of others does not make one obligated to validate whatever toxic or delusional beliefs that other individuals happen to hold, especially if those beliefs motivate behaviors which cause harm to others.

I agree. But that doesn't mean turning a blind eye to toxic, destructive behavior because of this. Compassion doesn't necessitate that every noxious, harmful belief structure under the sun should be tolerated by the rest of society because it arose from people who were hurt, demeaned, or humiliated. We can be compassionate towards people who have been victimized in these ways without condoning thier bad behavior.