Social media really accelerated that particular kind of violent, hedonistic stupidity, I think. Explicitly monetized it, explicitly selects for it, even on platforms which would otherwise appear to be algorithmically agnostic in their format. I’m not sure how to solve that, or if it’s even solvable, in the current system in which the internet exists. I think I still need to watch that one zizek video where he talks about how the function of ideology is to kill hope, and I maybe kind of agree with that statement at face value even if he’s probably going to end up saying something much more complicated and nuanced in the actual video.
You don’t have to read all this if you don’t want to, but it feels as though many things which are otherwise politically agnostic, ideologically agnostic, are kind of, thrust into the political realm with great violence, mostly as a kind of hedonistic rhetorical game rather than through a legitimate desire to improve things. In order to score political points. Things like public transportation, something which is otherwise politically neutral, actually not that related, fundamentally, to any ideology inherently, get politicized, and then they’re guaranteed to die in that throes of that. The rights of transgender people is maybe another such example. These are things which, regardless of your ideological or political predisposition, are totally fine to have, right. Public transportation, or, maybe put more literally, regardless of public-private structure, trains, buses, trams, subways, even bikes and pedestrian-friendly development, is just explicitly more efficient than the car centric, overly privatized shit we currently have. That’s true in both a privatized context and in a public context, and you could have an orientation towards either method of development regardless of your politics. The elites, presumably, want a better standard of living, not even just long term, but on the scale of, say, the next five or ten years, right, and mass transit projects can achieve that goal, even for them, by virtue of letting them save on the costs spent on their peasantry, their underclass, and increases the level by which private roadways, a private transportation, can be used easily by them. Transgender rights are the same way, decreasing trans healthcare provides a maybe minor, yet still existent, cost, it imposes a cost on society. You hear this explicitly called out whenever some chud talks about the suicide rate. Ideally, you would want to avoid suicide! You would want that healthcare, you should want to prevent that, in an ideologically neutral context, because it’s strictly inefficient!
I think, then, maybe the great achievement of the social media superweapon in a post-nuclear, cold war context, is to manipulate these aesthetic ideological dispositions, disconnected from reality, to recreate the appearance of politics without any of the content. I think maybe cynically that it’s just a grand kind of illusion used by three letter security agencies and private capital interests to explicitly manipulate the population, not into necessarily being concerned with actual material reality, but into being lost in this kind of hedonistic game world. I dunno. I think even beyond that we’re kind of, as we’re seeing now, we’re now all explicitly lost in that illusion, the illusion that was created by the internet, or, maybe, the illusion that created the internet. Even at the highest levels of government, this is the case. There’s no concern with any basis in reality, anymore. So under the guise of that, right, I think maybe we’re cooked, is I guess what I mean. Nobody’s steering the ship, anymore, even.
Americans, regardless of generation, on average seem notoriously short term minded. They don’t think, “this minority’s chance of survival and equity directly affects the safety and well being of our local community at large” they think these poor/blacks/trans (used to be gays too but since we have gay republicans now you hear less about it… give it time) make me feel uncomfortable, we should make sure we never see them.
And not seeing something is it not existing, and therefore irrelevant
I think it’s in some sense a reflection of the modern system, right? It’s obviously optimal, more efficient, more moral, whatever, to organize the economy in certain ways as opposed to other ways. Or, at least, I think so, or, I think that the underlying reality doesn’t really change regardless of the observer or how you term things, so what is efficient and moral will still arise naturally, and these disagreements, minor material management squabbles, don’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.
So, realistically, even under capitalism, you might expect the economy to be run efficiently, right? It does, or, almost does, in some places. Nevertheless, the sort of, initial belief, unyielding as it is in the face of reality, that there are certain people which are better than others, certain people which are more deserving of others, whether that be due to an inborn difference, or if that’s just due to them “working harder”, for whatever reason which we can’t actually point to logically. That belief creates a scenario in which people, maybe believing themselves to be the best, maybe just believing that their idea of management, their values, are more productive for society, perhaps, they want to extend their reach, survive and compete naturally in the market. Maybe even the idea that they just, are better than the immediate alternative, or that if they didn’t do it, then someone else would, which isn’t exactly hard to believe. The best immediate gains, so as to outcompete and absorb your competition, happen in the short term, and then eventually we have a market that’s shaped entirely just by short term thinking, shaped entirely by the competitive environment that spawns it.
And so, I dunno, the people that sort of, absorb this mentality through cultural osmosis, I don’t know if it’s abnormal or not. Then extend that to your basic xenophobia, like you said, pretty ripe recipe for a society that sort of progressively falls apart in this sort of a way.
Social media really accelerated that particular kind of violent, hedonistic stupidity, I think. Explicitly monetized it, explicitly selects for it, even on platforms which would otherwise appear to be algorithmically agnostic in their format. I’m not sure how to solve that, or if it’s even solvable, in the current system in which the internet exists. I think I still need to watch that one zizek video where he talks about how the function of ideology is to kill hope, and I maybe kind of agree with that statement at face value even if he’s probably going to end up saying something much more complicated and nuanced in the actual video.
You don’t have to read all this if you don’t want to, but it feels as though many things which are otherwise politically agnostic, ideologically agnostic, are kind of, thrust into the political realm with great violence, mostly as a kind of hedonistic rhetorical game rather than through a legitimate desire to improve things. In order to score political points. Things like public transportation, something which is otherwise politically neutral, actually not that related, fundamentally, to any ideology inherently, get politicized, and then they’re guaranteed to die in that throes of that. The rights of transgender people is maybe another such example. These are things which, regardless of your ideological or political predisposition, are totally fine to have, right. Public transportation, or, maybe put more literally, regardless of public-private structure, trains, buses, trams, subways, even bikes and pedestrian-friendly development, is just explicitly more efficient than the car centric, overly privatized shit we currently have. That’s true in both a privatized context and in a public context, and you could have an orientation towards either method of development regardless of your politics. The elites, presumably, want a better standard of living, not even just long term, but on the scale of, say, the next five or ten years, right, and mass transit projects can achieve that goal, even for them, by virtue of letting them save on the costs spent on their peasantry, their underclass, and increases the level by which private roadways, a private transportation, can be used easily by them. Transgender rights are the same way, decreasing trans healthcare provides a maybe minor, yet still existent, cost, it imposes a cost on society. You hear this explicitly called out whenever some chud talks about the suicide rate. Ideally, you would want to avoid suicide! You would want that healthcare, you should want to prevent that, in an ideologically neutral context, because it’s strictly inefficient!
I think, then, maybe the great achievement of the social media superweapon in a post-nuclear, cold war context, is to manipulate these aesthetic ideological dispositions, disconnected from reality, to recreate the appearance of politics without any of the content. I think maybe cynically that it’s just a grand kind of illusion used by three letter security agencies and private capital interests to explicitly manipulate the population, not into necessarily being concerned with actual material reality, but into being lost in this kind of hedonistic game world. I dunno. I think even beyond that we’re kind of, as we’re seeing now, we’re now all explicitly lost in that illusion, the illusion that was created by the internet, or, maybe, the illusion that created the internet. Even at the highest levels of government, this is the case. There’s no concern with any basis in reality, anymore. So under the guise of that, right, I think maybe we’re cooked, is I guess what I mean. Nobody’s steering the ship, anymore, even.
Americans, regardless of generation, on average seem notoriously short term minded. They don’t think, “this minority’s chance of survival and equity directly affects the safety and well being of our local community at large” they think these poor/blacks/trans (used to be gays too but since we have gay republicans now you hear less about it… give it time) make me feel uncomfortable, we should make sure we never see them.
And not seeing something is it not existing, and therefore irrelevant
I think it’s in some sense a reflection of the modern system, right? It’s obviously optimal, more efficient, more moral, whatever, to organize the economy in certain ways as opposed to other ways. Or, at least, I think so, or, I think that the underlying reality doesn’t really change regardless of the observer or how you term things, so what is efficient and moral will still arise naturally, and these disagreements, minor material management squabbles, don’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.
So, realistically, even under capitalism, you might expect the economy to be run efficiently, right? It does, or, almost does, in some places. Nevertheless, the sort of, initial belief, unyielding as it is in the face of reality, that there are certain people which are better than others, certain people which are more deserving of others, whether that be due to an inborn difference, or if that’s just due to them “working harder”, for whatever reason which we can’t actually point to logically. That belief creates a scenario in which people, maybe believing themselves to be the best, maybe just believing that their idea of management, their values, are more productive for society, perhaps, they want to extend their reach, survive and compete naturally in the market. Maybe even the idea that they just, are better than the immediate alternative, or that if they didn’t do it, then someone else would, which isn’t exactly hard to believe. The best immediate gains, so as to outcompete and absorb your competition, happen in the short term, and then eventually we have a market that’s shaped entirely just by short term thinking, shaped entirely by the competitive environment that spawns it.
And so, I dunno, the people that sort of, absorb this mentality through cultural osmosis, I don’t know if it’s abnormal or not. Then extend that to your basic xenophobia, like you said, pretty ripe recipe for a society that sort of progressively falls apart in this sort of a way.