DocWatts

Hey we can have that too in another few decades due to Demographic changes and the Boomers dying off, leaving the GOP without a solid block of Voters that they can rely upon to obstruct Social Reforms that are badly needed.

Speaking of Cartoon Network, how about Adventure Time and the way it explores concepts such as Social Constructs

Considering the fact that a large portion of the country won't put on face masks while in public to prevent the spread of a deadly disease at the government's insistence, any health advocacy information from the government is likely to be greeted with suspicion, and even the most benign information is likely to be politicized and turned into Conspiracy Theories. I don't envy anyone the task, because America is growing more ungovernable by the day with Social Media serving as a platform to spread misinformation and Conspiracy Theories, and with plenty of politicians eager to capitalize on these trends for purely self serving reasons.

Immanuel Kant, one of the central figures of the Enlightenment, is a great example of highly principled Moral Philosopher that serves as a sort of bridge between Blue and Orange. Was groundbreaking for his work in both ethics and metaphysics, and created a system of Universal moral principles (Blue), based upon on a secular, humanistic framework (Orange). Embodied the best aspects of both value systems.

An interesting examination of the philosophy of the Sith from Star Wars, and the way that it draws upon Friedrich Nietzsche's Will to Power as an influence. Almost a perfect encapsulation of Red values in a well known fictional setting.

Portugal basically took this approach to great success, but I fear that a lot of Americans are still too stuck in a retributive mindset to accept something so radically compassionate and open minded.

I don't really disagree with any of this. Yes we want to address the Root Cause, but at the same time that doesn't mean disregarding treatment for the Symptoms, as you recognize. I think a multi-faceted approach is probably the right one to take. I do think that education and media literacy can inculcate people to Conspiratorial thinking, and that there's no reason this can't be combined with the approach you mention.

Calling Social Constructs imaginary is a vast oversimplification in my view, due to the influence they have on Society being very, very real. Also 'Imaginary' brings connotations that whatever its attached to having No Truth, rather than it being a partial or contextual Truth.

Agreed. I think education (specifically media literacy, scientific literacy, and knowledge of basic epistemology) as well as the unmet deficiency needs in one's life are primary factors in how suspectable a person is to Conspiratorial Thinking. Most people who have researched the subject are well aware that feelings of disempowerment and a lack of control are shared psychological traits of people who fall into a Conspiratorial mindset. I also think learned people vastly overestimate the amount of deliberate thought and reflection that most people really put into thier worldview. I don't think we really disagree on there being a deeper cause for why people fall into Conspiratorial Thinking, but I would say that people buy in at different levels for different reasons, and that the deeper metaphysical reasons that you outline aren't always the most appropriate way of addressing the issue for all people. Addressing the deeper concerns you mention is also a much bigger task than educating people on how to consume media in a more conscious and reflective way.

A lot of times it can be that a Conspiracy Theory is presented in a really compelling way that seems to make sense if the person doesn't dig any further into it. A person can come away thinking that the government was hiding the true nature of the JFK assassination, without necessarily going beyond that and using Conspiracy Theories as a lens to look at reality. Believing in a Conspiracy Theory can be much more emotionally gratifying, and takes much less intellectual work, than forming a coherent picture out of the messy and complex nature of reality. Human psychology is highly suspectable to imposing narratives onto events that aren't necessarily connected in any meaningful way, and Conspiracy Theories are able to capitalize on this. Not everyone who unthinkingly shares a post on why the moon landing was a hoax necessarily has a deep, emotional attachment to Conspiracy Theories in the same way that someone whose gone further down that Rabbit Hole does. Unreflective, lazy thinking can explain a lot in this regard.

@Scholar I think it's also important to recognize that people who buy into Conspiracy Theories do so on a spectrum, and not everyone gets involved to the same level. Not everyone who propagates Conspiracy Theories is a hardcore Conspiracy Theorist. Some people just dabble, while others will form a whole identity around it. I'd be willing to bet a lot more get sucked in out of ignorance and a lack of media literacy, as opposed to those who go much further and use it as a lens through which to view the world.

Hence why Media Literacy and basic knowledge of Epistemology are arguably more important now than at any other point in our History. Which in all fairness, are two subjects that our Society does a terrible job of educating people on.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.slashgear.com/fairphone-3-makes-modular-phone-future-a-reality-27635344/amp/ Not like the technology for more Modular consumer electronics doesn't exist, the challenges seem to be economic and market driven in nature, rather than an insoluble engineering hurdle. And it's not like a phone using modular parts couldn't co-exist with a secondhand market, just like how I can go on ebay and a sell/purchase an older Graphics Card or CPU. And yeah that wouldn't extend the shelf life of say a smart phone indefinitely, but it would give these devices potentially a much longer shelf life. And while it's good that many old electronics do get recycled, until our power system is running on %100 green energy, there's still a carbon footprint to recycling. There's no reason that this couldn't work in a market driven distribution system, if this sort of thing was properly incentivized. Wasn't necessarily endorsing a Resource Based Economy, so much as plucking an idea or two from it. And even if I were, Resource Based Economies don't necessarily have to be divorced from markets, or Centrally Planned. A market based system that takes ecological costs into the price of consumer Goods could be considered a form of a Resource Based Economy.

Yeah I think alot of people see ending the War on Drugs as a magic bullet that will end mass incarceration on its own, when in reality it's just one important part of more systemic reforms that are needed.

Not sure how workable of a System it will end up being, but one really good idea I've heard discussed alongside a Resource Based Economy is to design consumer electronics to be more modular in design, so that you could say replace its CPU when it starts to become outdated, rather than tossing the whole unit in the Trash. Of course that would require a much less wasteful economic system than the one we have, but maybe it could become a possibility one day.

I think Oregon is going in the right direction; decriminalize personal possession, and begin to legalize and regulate substances on a case by case basis, at a sustainable rate and in a controlled way so as not to provoke a societal backlash. Portugal is obviously another Case Study to keep in mind for a successful example of drug decriminalization, I do think though that even if it does work in principle, sadly such a humane policy might be a step large far for a big portion of the country. As far as legalization, I think case by case is definitely the way to go, rather than legalizing everything. Certainty some substances are more benign than others, and we should take in to account if it has any medicinal benefits and also its potential for abuse. Show that legalization works with things like weed and psychedelics, then maybe consider legalizing other drugs if it makes sense.

While I think that evolutionary psychology explanations can sometimes be Reductionist when describing the complexity of the modern world, in this particular case, looking at it from an evolutionary perspective can perhaps explain a great deal. For the vast majority of our history humans were hunter gatherers, and our basic psychology was formed under survival conditions that were much more brutal than the world we find ourselves living in today.

How Violence is Contextualized in the media it's employed in matters a great deal here; using 'Violence' as a catch all term is about as helpful as using 'Drugs' as a catch all category to refer to psychedelics and also to Meth. Professional sports, the Godfather films, and a video game like Space Invaders all employ violence, but in each case its contextualized completely differently, employed for different purposes, and the violence is at different levels of abstraction.

Good example here of what Ken Wilber calls 'Aperspectival Madness'. From an epistemological perspective, no Information source is ever going to be %100 verifiable. The best we can do is pick the best, most reliable sources of information from the choices available to us at the time, and use that as a basis to make decisions. And fact is that if multiple relatively neutral Fact Checking sources conflict with what your professed Conspiracy Theory, it's almost certainly wrong. The problem is that those with a Conspiratorial Mindset never turn that skepticism inward, for example by scrutinizing Conspiratorial information sources with the same effort they use to try and discredit Fact Checking information sources.

I hear the game is kind of a buggy, unstable mess on PC at this time, due to it being rushed to meet its launch deadline. Will probably check back in a few weeks once the game has received some patches.

The problem is that Trump and Republicans are intentionally doing this to undermine faith in electoral Democracy, for purely political and opportunist reasons; none of their concerns are coming from a place of Good Faith, and people are absolutely in the right for pointing this out.

Duncan Trussel and Pendleton Ward's The Midnight Gospel is a great, humorous example that embodies aspects of Turquoise.

To understand why Hitler sent troops in to Russia, you have to understand the Ideological motivations behind Nazi Germany's war aims. Hitler and the Nazis saw the Soviet Union as the beating heart of the Jewish-Socialism that lie at the core of the Conspiracy Theories that their whole ideology was constructed around, and the Nazis saw themselves in a heroic war of annihilation to save Germany and Europe from Communism and Jew-ery. In addition to this, there are a number of strategic reasons that would have pushed Germany into war with the Soviet Union. A big one is geographic, since Germany found itself in the unenviable situation of being in the center of a two front war; ie having Britain and France to the West, and Russia to the East. Another strategic reason is that Germany didn't have the oil production capabilities to sustain their war efforts, so the oil fields and production facilities in Russia were vitally important to Germany; the fact that they just happened to be located in the territory of Nazi Germany's ideological enemy was a nice bonus. And after the war, another of Germany's ultimate goals was to seize Russian terrorizes to provide living space and resources for ethnic Germans, after a horrific extermination campaign of Slavic people that was going to be much larger in scope than the Holocaust. While we can look back with the benefit of foresight and see that Operation Barbarossa was doomed for a variety of reasons, everyone at the time falsely believed that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, and that just one good kick was needed to send the entire structure collapsing down. The campaign was supposed to be over relatively quickly, due to German technological superiority and organization, and due to the previous success of the Blitzkrieg strategy; it was not supposed to last into the Winter, which is why Winter coats and gear were not provided to the German military. Even though some of his advisors warned him that the war might drag on in to the Winter and his troops would freeze to death without Winter gear, Hitler disregarded this because he didn't want the possibility of long, drawn out struggle hurting morale. As far as declaring war on the United States, a few things to keep in mind. The United States was pivotal in keeping Britain in the war due to cash and supply shipments. And from Hitler's Conspiratorial point of view, he saw the United States as under the influence of the same worldwide Jewish Conspiracy that was he was already at war with in Europe and Russia.

Sadly this was far from uncommon in that era; people like Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, and the American Progressive movement of the 1910s and 20s bought in to the pseudoscience of eugenics. Hitler just took that ideology to its logical and horrific conclusion.

Borg doesn't map cleanly onto the SD-model in my view, similar to how you wouldn't map an AI on to Spiral Dynamics. Unlike a lot of the other races which are meant to be rough analogues of various Earth cultures, the Borg are meant to be, well, Alien. Borg arguably doesn't have what can be considered a Culture, though thematically there are some interesting parallels you could draw to ideas like Utilitarianism, Communism, or Capitalism taken to thier logical and horrific endpoints, but throwing an SD meme at the Borg is a pretty big stretch.