In 1975 I formed the IBR, the international brotherhood of relaxation. Our motto was, there are very few things worth losing sleep over. Seems like Walter was watching me from the bushes.
"And I sometimes wish that America, our society, could step back from itself and step back from the rooting interests that it has to see what we’re doing collectively."
I do this regularly. It is the general reason for my career success. I am never the smartest guy in the room, but I am often the most self-aware of my own emotional pull toward comfort narratives. I am self-disruptive... constantly seeking contradictions to my strongly-held beliefs. I don't want to make stupid mistakes because of my blind bias. I don't like bias that isn't backed by a strong set of facts and truth.
Because of this I often appear to others to have weird opinions. These people generally have succumbed to a level of confirmation bias to what they think they already know. They are vested in maintaining their ego and/or some perceived rank or authority, and have dug in their heels for a position. Me, I easily navigate around them making better-optimized decisions because I am motivated to see the entire field and my ego is not wrapped up in needing to be right, but wanting to succeed with the best outcomes.
I think too this is a word vs tangible production mindset. People that are word-oriented (all of the media) are generally vested in their own ego pursuit related to the use of words. The problem with this is a sort of myopia... a fixation on a narrow topic of conflict over words. Us "tangibles" use words as a means to an end of material production... the words are only a tool and not the product. Focusing on the larger end result requires seeing the field... and assessing all the risks and opportunities past, present and future.
But I see that the majority of people are not very good at stepping back and doing comprehensive analysis to arrive at an opinion. And most don't care to build self-awareness of the decision sub-optimization risks for their ego pursuits and tendency for confirmation biases.
I have found that I am not the smartest guy in the room except to know all those people that aspire to be the smarted guy or girl or ?? in the room, are likely to own quite the competitive disadvantage failing to see the field like I do. That is fine with me. What is not fine... these people vote... and their lack of big-picture consideration causes them to vote for crap.
I have observed that people who aspire to be the smartest person in the room usually aren’t and those who actually are the smartest person in the room don’t have to prove it
I am willing to concede at any point that there are people in the room that are smarter than me on certain topics. And I will tell them thus and feed their ego. It is important to have domain experts. Where the wheels come of is when a domain expert decides he should be master of all without the self-awareness that he is biased within his domain of expertise and thus at great risk of being generally wrong.
The lesson of leadership is that you should listen to domain experts and make a comprehensive decision based on the big picture. You should never leave complex decisions to the domain expert because they will likely be wrong.
This is why Biden failed by using the "listen to the science" excuse and by elevating Fauci to run the show during the pandemic. Fauci still thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. Biden cannot seem to grasp the big picture and just delegates to the unqualified.
:The lesson of leadership is that you should listen to domain experts and make a comprehensive decision based on the big picture. You should never leave complex decisions to the domain expert because they likely be wrong.:
This is a fabulous insight. I knew it, live it. But could not articulate it prior to reading it. For 35+ years, I've seen the expert unaware of what they don't know fall flat. How to nicely quiet them so those expert at complex analysis and decisions can lead... that's my big question.
People can make a good living being a domain expert. Some disciplines leave no time for much else. I celebrate it when someone developed mastery of a skill or topic. But when their egos get so fluffed that they think they have superior understanding, if they have any influence or power, bad things tend to happen. Hollywood is a good example... actors that mistake their acting skill and popularity for being more knowledgeable than others... and that use their popularity to generally wrongly influence politics and policy.
Then there is the problem with leadership.
I will use Donald Trump and Joe Biden as examples. Joe Biden has never really had any job or profession outside of DC politics. He is a master at DC politics and not much else. Donald Trump is a master at a few things, but not how politics work in DC. These two should have domain experts around them filling their gaps. They should also recognize that their domain expertise causes a confirmation bias as they feel they are masters. Good leaders listen and facilitate to reach a decision that is optimized from the input of many qualified voices... except when they need to move quickly, and then they need to be decisive and hope that their previous experience and gained knowledge serves them well. And in all cases, good leaders take responsibility for all decisions and do not delegate big decisions to myopic domain experts.
This reminds me. It looks like a parable, but this is a true story reported by William Dalrymple in his City of Djinns.
In Delhi was a Hindu radio personality known for his disdain of Muslims. When William went to interview him he noticed Muslims awaiting an audience. He asked, what are they doing here? Oh, they're here to have a dispute adjudicated. But don't you hate all Muslims? Yes, but I hate them all equally. Since he had no ties to the Muslim community he could be relied upon to make an unprejudiced judgement.
The fear of being individually crushed is what they rely on to control the herd.
It is ironic how we went from activists being the heroes willing accept the risk of being crushed to agitate for social justice, to those same people fixated on social justice now in charge of institutions and working to crush any that agitate in opposition.
Yes. I think I read somewhere that a minority of people have the capability to view a future state and work toward it... but more alarming was the studies that demonstrate the percentage of people with this capability has been dwindling. Delayed gratification is less likely these days.
Most people are dime-a-dozen critics of every thing else. They are "show me your idea and I will gladly tell you what is wrong with it" type of people.
If I may make a serious statement about religion, I would like at least to make the point that in earliest Christianity the notion that we are in charge of making the world, through wars, etc was stood on its head by the notion that humility was the greatest of virtues, and that our highest priority is to care for "the least of these." Also that suffering and sacrifice can themselves be part and parcel of redemption and even an inexplicable joy. Whatever has been made of that in various forms since, that stands as the basic teaching of its ancient roots. And that is more akin to Walter's "let's just step back a bit" than one might at first understand
There seem to be many contradictions within Christianity and, I think, that has mitigated extremes. On an individual basis, it seems to me that in the past - because of our roots in Christianity (?) - we have accepted ourselves as imperfect. Today, we say we are imperfect, but don't actually believe it. When I watch movies from the 50s and even into the 00s, there are strong relationships between people that wouldn't get within a mile of each other in today's culture.
And, not in a moral way but in an manner that accepts imperfections and even contradiction, perhaps our drifting away from Christianity is the cause of our cultural disintegration.
Buffalo Springfield said it perfectly in "For What It's Worth": "nobody's right if everybody's wrong" and "singing songs and carrying signs, mostly say hooray for our side".
Great piece Matt and Walter!Amplifying emotion and attenuating reason is tool number one in the would be dictators tool box. Steering zombies is easy. Trump derangement, climate, gender ideology, racism, white supremacy, gun confiscation etcerea are all used to pump up emotion and donations. They are campaigns to centralize power, to extract from the private sector and fuel a centralized public sector. Whether its the latest war or the dream of medicare for all, centralizing power is the common thread. This is why Matt's work on the Censorship Industrial Complex is so important. Building countervailing forces is critical.
I hadn't read the story (also a sci-fi newbie) but the ending made me think of the ending of 2001 - my God - it's full of stars. Also this Stephen Crane poem -
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
We get so consumed in our science, our religion, our world. It's impossible to grasp our smallness in time, in space. Eternity and infinity. But there is a kind of beauty in this moment and in the scale of the universe's indifference to us.
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. - Cormac M.
The name for “not engaging with the news,” or not believing that “by engaging with the news I’m doing my duty to be informed,” is not apathy, but Humility. It’s opposite is Vanity or hubris.
As Aldous Huxley said in *The Perennial Philosophy*, “Sufficient not only unto the day, but also unto the place, is the evil thereof. Agitation over happenings which we are powerless to modify, either because they have not yet occurred, or else are occurring at an inaccessible distance from us, achieves nothing beyond the inoculation of here and now with the remote or anticipated evil that is the object of our distress. Listening four or five times a day to newscasters and commentators, reading the morning papers and all the weeklies and monthlies—nowadays, this is described as “taking an intelligent interest in politics.” St. John of the Cross would have called it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude’s sake.”
It's not a "language" rule, it's a "grammar" rule. Grammar rules perform a function. "Its" is a possessive pronoun (his, her) for nouns with an undefined gender. "It's" is a contraction for "it is." Using them both properly constitutes "consistency."
Without such "rules" learning a language would be that much more difficult.
I vote for starting the F it party. Just let everything fall apart. Quit collecting taxes, get the government out of everything and then vote once a year on what (if anything) you might add back that the old government did. It hard to imagine how that could be worse than the lying, slimy, self-serving succubus we call a government now.
I have watched the climate science develop over the years, and unlike Walter Kim, I see the predictions of the theory consistently coming to pass. There should be little doubt that our culture is in big trouble as there is no sign, none, of the necessary changes that are necessary for surviving the climate chaos that is occurring. Perhaps the trouble is that climate change is so slow-moving--the earth is pretty big, after all. But few are able to accept the slow changes to every day life that must happen to avoid catastrophe.
The human species is well equipped to handle "slow-moving" crises. It's acute ones, like thermonuclear war that are more problematic.
The issue is that the proposed solutions to the problems faced by "climate change" don't come close to solving anything, and rather create new ones.
The only way to eliminate Anthropomorphic Global Warming is to hold China and India to account. Sanctions don't work, other than to starve the weaker portions of the populace. Short of total war - what is your solution?
First, our "slow-moving climate crisis" is a blink of an eye in geological processes. The warming planet does not give species a chance to adapt to change and thus we face what is called "the Sixth Extinction."
Second, what kind of warmongering neocon are you? The West has offshored its pollution to China and India big time. To blame them is nonsense.
Solutions? Easy, but space is limited. 1) stop war and war making; 2) replace industrial agriculture and heavy meat-eating with sustainable agriculture and plant-centered diets (meat is a condiment); 3) focus all available energy on climate adaptation and long-term sustainability. This means redesigning living spaces to be energy efficient in all aspects--insulation, heat pumps, solar water and eletiricty, but at the macro level to end the use of personal vehicles for mass transit; address carbon capture and species decline by rewilding at least half the planet.
It does not take much to complete the list as long as you admit that a centrally planned, socialist economy and politics is the only way out. Look at 'Half-Earth Socialism" for inspiration: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2650-half-earth-socialism
It's Tough to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future.
The future ain't what it used to be.
--Yogi Berra
Walter is seeking rationales for whistling in the dark or perhaps there is just a bit of audience capture here. He appears to enjoy life in Montana and his local relationships are obviously important to him, which is on the whole admirable. Act locally, think globally Honey and vinegar. Et cetera.
I saw Chomsky talk on this in person and he would second your comment. Re the slow moving thing, I don't think it's that. Because we're also remarkably close to some kind of nuclear showdown and that's not slow moving. All the treaties are gone - Putin just signed a thing saying he wouldn't participate in the new Start treaty. The Ukraine war is a powder keg. Same with South China sea. Earlier we had people like Kennedy to avert disaster. Now we have idiots. I don't think we're going to make it, not in the way we are now.
We already have what you're talking about in the libertarian party. "Everyone should just stop fighting and be a little more responsible." as impossible as tropical weather in Russia. And then what you do in the LP is you get into vicious friendship destroying arguments about how best to stop fighting and keep the future in perspective. It's pretty much perfect.
I've read most of Asimov, which you point out was an Intellectual Elitist, and much of his stuff came across as Preachy. I much preferred the rather working class writings of Heinlein, even though one of his most "political" stories, "Starship Trooper", has been grossly misportrayed in the movie "Based on the Book". However, the premise between "Foundation" verses "Starship Trooper" is that leadership by the elite will eventually lead to paradise verses that of what works practically, no matter if it seems simplistic, works better in the long run.
New religions come and go all the time, but why did the Mormons survive? Not considering the Dogma, the religion provides a strong group involvement, almost demands it, that has the practical side of mutual support and even the recommendation of two years food serves as a group ideal. I've been involved in the construction of a number of Mormon temples, they require that materials that can be sourced through one of the Saints had to be purchased from them. So a strong group identity, a work and educational value blessed by the religion, and economic cooperation seems to be keys to a successful religion. I could draw parallel's to the Jewish and Sikh communities as well.
The explosion of "Intellectuals" in the West is a direct result of the Financialization of the Western Economy that allowed the upper echelons to manipulate the value of money without a comparative gain in production. Since this has been going on since the Clinton administration, most of them seem to just consider it their right. When you add the disastrous Student Loan programs that pumped billions into the University system, it added a layer of "educational elites" that generated no practical results for the nation. What we got was an inflated upper level of the economy that survived on sucking the life blood out of the working and middle class. If you look at the Internet as the best bad example, overlooking the rampant censorship, now that the banking numbers are starting to return to a more normal level, there is has been an employment massacre in the industry. Have any of you noticed any down side to those layoffs as far as performance?
The difference between the elite and the working/middle class is simply that the elite can believe and do things that aren't practical or productive. My parents were from Kentucky Appalachia and from a county is still consistently in the 50 poorest counties in the US. My father escaped by joining the Military, my mother was shipped to live with an aunt in the Cincinnati area to work as a telephone operator by the time she was 16. I just include that to show my Blue Collar creds. You want to explain Donald Trump? Look at thirty years of offshored jobs, failing pension plans, lower wages over all combined with school systems that no long seem to focus on a practical education. Trump has been one of the few politicians that has even articulated the concerns of flyover America and both Parties have made it their job to Fuck him. None of that escapes these non-intellectuals. They understand that they won't get a fair trial, the present regime cares more about illegal aliens and LGBQT (or however many letters you add), and that most of those in office care more about Ukraine than the issues facing their own constituents.
In 1975 I formed the IBR, the international brotherhood of relaxation. Our motto was, there are very few things worth losing sleep over. Seems like Walter was watching me from the bushes.
Sounds...feline.
Too funny! Love it!
Great piece.
"And I sometimes wish that America, our society, could step back from itself and step back from the rooting interests that it has to see what we’re doing collectively."
I do this regularly. It is the general reason for my career success. I am never the smartest guy in the room, but I am often the most self-aware of my own emotional pull toward comfort narratives. I am self-disruptive... constantly seeking contradictions to my strongly-held beliefs. I don't want to make stupid mistakes because of my blind bias. I don't like bias that isn't backed by a strong set of facts and truth.
Because of this I often appear to others to have weird opinions. These people generally have succumbed to a level of confirmation bias to what they think they already know. They are vested in maintaining their ego and/or some perceived rank or authority, and have dug in their heels for a position. Me, I easily navigate around them making better-optimized decisions because I am motivated to see the entire field and my ego is not wrapped up in needing to be right, but wanting to succeed with the best outcomes.
I think too this is a word vs tangible production mindset. People that are word-oriented (all of the media) are generally vested in their own ego pursuit related to the use of words. The problem with this is a sort of myopia... a fixation on a narrow topic of conflict over words. Us "tangibles" use words as a means to an end of material production... the words are only a tool and not the product. Focusing on the larger end result requires seeing the field... and assessing all the risks and opportunities past, present and future.
But I see that the majority of people are not very good at stepping back and doing comprehensive analysis to arrive at an opinion. And most don't care to build self-awareness of the decision sub-optimization risks for their ego pursuits and tendency for confirmation biases.
I have found that I am not the smartest guy in the room except to know all those people that aspire to be the smarted guy or girl or ?? in the room, are likely to own quite the competitive disadvantage failing to see the field like I do. That is fine with me. What is not fine... these people vote... and their lack of big-picture consideration causes them to vote for crap.
I've heard it said that if you are the smartest guy in the room, you're in the wrong room.
I have observed that people who aspire to be the smartest person in the room usually aren’t and those who actually are the smartest person in the room don’t have to prove it
I am willing to concede at any point that there are people in the room that are smarter than me on certain topics. And I will tell them thus and feed their ego. It is important to have domain experts. Where the wheels come of is when a domain expert decides he should be master of all without the self-awareness that he is biased within his domain of expertise and thus at great risk of being generally wrong.
The lesson of leadership is that you should listen to domain experts and make a comprehensive decision based on the big picture. You should never leave complex decisions to the domain expert because they will likely be wrong.
This is why Biden failed by using the "listen to the science" excuse and by elevating Fauci to run the show during the pandemic. Fauci still thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. Biden cannot seem to grasp the big picture and just delegates to the unqualified.
Excellent analysis.
:The lesson of leadership is that you should listen to domain experts and make a comprehensive decision based on the big picture. You should never leave complex decisions to the domain expert because they likely be wrong.:
This is a fabulous insight. I knew it, live it. But could not articulate it prior to reading it. For 35+ years, I've seen the expert unaware of what they don't know fall flat. How to nicely quiet them so those expert at complex analysis and decisions can lead... that's my big question.
People can make a good living being a domain expert. Some disciplines leave no time for much else. I celebrate it when someone developed mastery of a skill or topic. But when their egos get so fluffed that they think they have superior understanding, if they have any influence or power, bad things tend to happen. Hollywood is a good example... actors that mistake their acting skill and popularity for being more knowledgeable than others... and that use their popularity to generally wrongly influence politics and policy.
Then there is the problem with leadership.
I will use Donald Trump and Joe Biden as examples. Joe Biden has never really had any job or profession outside of DC politics. He is a master at DC politics and not much else. Donald Trump is a master at a few things, but not how politics work in DC. These two should have domain experts around them filling their gaps. They should also recognize that their domain expertise causes a confirmation bias as they feel they are masters. Good leaders listen and facilitate to reach a decision that is optimized from the input of many qualified voices... except when they need to move quickly, and then they need to be decisive and hope that their previous experience and gained knowledge serves them well. And in all cases, good leaders take responsibility for all decisions and do not delegate big decisions to myopic domain experts.
No, the smartest person in the room is the one MOST likely to say I don’t know
"I don't like bias that isn't backed by a strong set of facts and truth."
As soon as I read that, I thought This is an unpopular person.
It is sometimes perplexing, but absolutely the case.
This reminds me. It looks like a parable, but this is a true story reported by William Dalrymple in his City of Djinns.
In Delhi was a Hindu radio personality known for his disdain of Muslims. When William went to interview him he noticed Muslims awaiting an audience. He asked, what are they doing here? Oh, they're here to have a dispute adjudicated. But don't you hate all Muslims? Yes, but I hate them all equally. Since he had no ties to the Muslim community he could be relied upon to make an unprejudiced judgement.
As an engineer that shares that perspective, you are correct in my case. "Why are you always arguing with everyone?"
The problem in stepping back to see what we are doing collectively is that as soon as you stop and ponder the powers that be tend to crush you.
The fear of being individually crushed is what they rely on to control the herd.
It is ironic how we went from activists being the heroes willing accept the risk of being crushed to agitate for social justice, to those same people fixated on social justice now in charge of institutions and working to crush any that agitate in opposition.
I think I am like you. I think by 'stepping back' one can come up with a vision/future.
Yes. I think I read somewhere that a minority of people have the capability to view a future state and work toward it... but more alarming was the studies that demonstrate the percentage of people with this capability has been dwindling. Delayed gratification is less likely these days.
Most people are dime-a-dozen critics of every thing else. They are "show me your idea and I will gladly tell you what is wrong with it" type of people.
I wrote this as it is somewhat related to that point: https://socialmisfit.substack.com/p/it-is-a-climb-not-a-privilege
If I may make a serious statement about religion, I would like at least to make the point that in earliest Christianity the notion that we are in charge of making the world, through wars, etc was stood on its head by the notion that humility was the greatest of virtues, and that our highest priority is to care for "the least of these." Also that suffering and sacrifice can themselves be part and parcel of redemption and even an inexplicable joy. Whatever has been made of that in various forms since, that stands as the basic teaching of its ancient roots. And that is more akin to Walter's "let's just step back a bit" than one might at first understand
There seem to be many contradictions within Christianity and, I think, that has mitigated extremes. On an individual basis, it seems to me that in the past - because of our roots in Christianity (?) - we have accepted ourselves as imperfect. Today, we say we are imperfect, but don't actually believe it. When I watch movies from the 50s and even into the 00s, there are strong relationships between people that wouldn't get within a mile of each other in today's culture.
And, not in a moral way but in an manner that accepts imperfections and even contradiction, perhaps our drifting away from Christianity is the cause of our cultural disintegration.
Buffalo Springfield said it perfectly in "For What It's Worth": "nobody's right if everybody's wrong" and "singing songs and carrying signs, mostly say hooray for our side".
Great song!!
Some might say the battle is between worship and idolatry
Great piece Matt and Walter!Amplifying emotion and attenuating reason is tool number one in the would be dictators tool box. Steering zombies is easy. Trump derangement, climate, gender ideology, racism, white supremacy, gun confiscation etcerea are all used to pump up emotion and donations. They are campaigns to centralize power, to extract from the private sector and fuel a centralized public sector. Whether its the latest war or the dream of medicare for all, centralizing power is the common thread. This is why Matt's work on the Censorship Industrial Complex is so important. Building countervailing forces is critical.
"...to extract from the private sector and fuel a centralized public sector..."
They've certainly got you distracted.
MCL said there were campaigns to do this. He/she didn't say they were successful campaigns.
I hadn't read the story (also a sci-fi newbie) but the ending made me think of the ending of 2001 - my God - it's full of stars. Also this Stephen Crane poem -
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
We get so consumed in our science, our religion, our world. It's impossible to grasp our smallness in time, in space. Eternity and infinity. But there is a kind of beauty in this moment and in the scale of the universe's indifference to us.
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. - Cormac M.
The Breakfast for Dinner Party.
I can get behind that.
The name for “not engaging with the news,” or not believing that “by engaging with the news I’m doing my duty to be informed,” is not apathy, but Humility. It’s opposite is Vanity or hubris.
As Aldous Huxley said in *The Perennial Philosophy*, “Sufficient not only unto the day, but also unto the place, is the evil thereof. Agitation over happenings which we are powerless to modify, either because they have not yet occurred, or else are occurring at an inaccessible distance from us, achieves nothing beyond the inoculation of here and now with the remote or anticipated evil that is the object of our distress. Listening four or five times a day to newscasters and commentators, reading the morning papers and all the weeklies and monthlies—nowadays, this is described as “taking an intelligent interest in politics.” St. John of the Cross would have called it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude’s sake.”
Excerpt From
The Perennial Philosophy
Aldous Huxley
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-perennial-philosophy/id486663631
This material may be protected by copyright.
“Its opposite,” not “it’s”.
This has to be the most common mistake in English. Even Abraham Lincoln made that mistake!
auto-correct adds the apostrophe and I wasn’t paying close attention before hitting the “send” or “publish” button.
There are too many times I have had to correct auto-correct. I am considering turning the darned thing off!
That's because it's inconsistent. If English language rules were consistent, they would both be spelled it's.
It's not a "language" rule, it's a "grammar" rule. Grammar rules perform a function. "Its" is a possessive pronoun (his, her) for nouns with an undefined gender. "It's" is a contraction for "it is." Using them both properly constitutes "consistency."
Without such "rules" learning a language would be that much more difficult.
For instance, "its color is blue," if the "it" is specified, the sentence would read, "the car's color is blue."
Correct.
I never thought of that. You wouldn't be able to tell them apart, but so what? It's always clear from context.
I don’t agree that all reporters in film are depicted as evil. How about Clark Kent.
I agree. Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight was great. The cartoonist Robert Graysmith in Zodiac, though he was a cartoonist so I guess that's peripheral.
I've always been a fan of the Church of the SubGenius' pursuit of Slack.
Bob rules!!!
BOB!
He will give you slack.
The Asleep Party. Slogan: "Not Woke, Not Anti-Woke. Wake me when it's over."
The shorter pithy version was better.
Could be.
WRT Nightfall, the term that the Marxists use is to "heighten the contradictions". To make people take a side.
This is not unlike to "imminentize the eschaton", that is, to hasten the end of the world.
I vote for starting the F it party. Just let everything fall apart. Quit collecting taxes, get the government out of everything and then vote once a year on what (if anything) you might add back that the old government did. It hard to imagine how that could be worse than the lying, slimy, self-serving succubus we call a government now.
As a student of history I regrettably find it all too easy to imagine circumstances that are worse. Much worse.
The Mañana Party: Today is tomorrow and tomorrow is a week from Thursday.
I have watched the climate science develop over the years, and unlike Walter Kim, I see the predictions of the theory consistently coming to pass. There should be little doubt that our culture is in big trouble as there is no sign, none, of the necessary changes that are necessary for surviving the climate chaos that is occurring. Perhaps the trouble is that climate change is so slow-moving--the earth is pretty big, after all. But few are able to accept the slow changes to every day life that must happen to avoid catastrophe.
"I see the predictions of the theory consistently coming to pass." What are your top three?
The human species is well equipped to handle "slow-moving" crises. It's acute ones, like thermonuclear war that are more problematic.
The issue is that the proposed solutions to the problems faced by "climate change" don't come close to solving anything, and rather create new ones.
The only way to eliminate Anthropomorphic Global Warming is to hold China and India to account. Sanctions don't work, other than to starve the weaker portions of the populace. Short of total war - what is your solution?
First, our "slow-moving climate crisis" is a blink of an eye in geological processes. The warming planet does not give species a chance to adapt to change and thus we face what is called "the Sixth Extinction."
Second, what kind of warmongering neocon are you? The West has offshored its pollution to China and India big time. To blame them is nonsense.
Solutions? Easy, but space is limited. 1) stop war and war making; 2) replace industrial agriculture and heavy meat-eating with sustainable agriculture and plant-centered diets (meat is a condiment); 3) focus all available energy on climate adaptation and long-term sustainability. This means redesigning living spaces to be energy efficient in all aspects--insulation, heat pumps, solar water and eletiricty, but at the macro level to end the use of personal vehicles for mass transit; address carbon capture and species decline by rewilding at least half the planet.
It does not take much to complete the list as long as you admit that a centrally planned, socialist economy and politics is the only way out. Look at 'Half-Earth Socialism" for inspiration: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2650-half-earth-socialism
It's Tough to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future.
The future ain't what it used to be.
--Yogi Berra
Walter is seeking rationales for whistling in the dark or perhaps there is just a bit of audience capture here. He appears to enjoy life in Montana and his local relationships are obviously important to him, which is on the whole admirable. Act locally, think globally Honey and vinegar. Et cetera.
I saw Chomsky talk on this in person and he would second your comment. Re the slow moving thing, I don't think it's that. Because we're also remarkably close to some kind of nuclear showdown and that's not slow moving. All the treaties are gone - Putin just signed a thing saying he wouldn't participate in the new Start treaty. The Ukraine war is a powder keg. Same with South China sea. Earlier we had people like Kennedy to avert disaster. Now we have idiots. I don't think we're going to make it, not in the way we are now.
We already have what you're talking about in the libertarian party. "Everyone should just stop fighting and be a little more responsible." as impossible as tropical weather in Russia. And then what you do in the LP is you get into vicious friendship destroying arguments about how best to stop fighting and keep the future in perspective. It's pretty much perfect.
I've read most of Asimov, which you point out was an Intellectual Elitist, and much of his stuff came across as Preachy. I much preferred the rather working class writings of Heinlein, even though one of his most "political" stories, "Starship Trooper", has been grossly misportrayed in the movie "Based on the Book". However, the premise between "Foundation" verses "Starship Trooper" is that leadership by the elite will eventually lead to paradise verses that of what works practically, no matter if it seems simplistic, works better in the long run.
New religions come and go all the time, but why did the Mormons survive? Not considering the Dogma, the religion provides a strong group involvement, almost demands it, that has the practical side of mutual support and even the recommendation of two years food serves as a group ideal. I've been involved in the construction of a number of Mormon temples, they require that materials that can be sourced through one of the Saints had to be purchased from them. So a strong group identity, a work and educational value blessed by the religion, and economic cooperation seems to be keys to a successful religion. I could draw parallel's to the Jewish and Sikh communities as well.
The explosion of "Intellectuals" in the West is a direct result of the Financialization of the Western Economy that allowed the upper echelons to manipulate the value of money without a comparative gain in production. Since this has been going on since the Clinton administration, most of them seem to just consider it their right. When you add the disastrous Student Loan programs that pumped billions into the University system, it added a layer of "educational elites" that generated no practical results for the nation. What we got was an inflated upper level of the economy that survived on sucking the life blood out of the working and middle class. If you look at the Internet as the best bad example, overlooking the rampant censorship, now that the banking numbers are starting to return to a more normal level, there is has been an employment massacre in the industry. Have any of you noticed any down side to those layoffs as far as performance?
The difference between the elite and the working/middle class is simply that the elite can believe and do things that aren't practical or productive. My parents were from Kentucky Appalachia and from a county is still consistently in the 50 poorest counties in the US. My father escaped by joining the Military, my mother was shipped to live with an aunt in the Cincinnati area to work as a telephone operator by the time she was 16. I just include that to show my Blue Collar creds. You want to explain Donald Trump? Look at thirty years of offshored jobs, failing pension plans, lower wages over all combined with school systems that no long seem to focus on a practical education. Trump has been one of the few politicians that has even articulated the concerns of flyover America and both Parties have made it their job to Fuck him. None of that escapes these non-intellectuals. They understand that they won't get a fair trial, the present regime cares more about illegal aliens and LGBQT (or however many letters you add), and that most of those in office care more about Ukraine than the issues facing their own constituents.