Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

DJ-Dowism t1_j0vn7l5 wrote

Reply to comment by Opposite_Personality in Our stated political beliefs are irrational when taken as a package – the don’t appear to form coherent wholes. But we should be skeptical about whether these irrational political beliefs are really beliefs by IAI_Admin

100%. If you take the time to examine your beliefs and construct your own view of the world and how you see political structures best helping us, there should be no hypocrisy or conflict in your ideology. If you instead pick an off-the-shelf ideology from an existing party built to lure people with hot button issues and rage at their "enemies" as cover for servicing their corporate sponsors, then yeah there's going to be a lot of problems.

Very interested though - how would you describe your political ideology/philosophy?

7

Opposite_Personality t1_j0w8bpz wrote

Thanks for the gentle reply. Of course I am aware of such mechanisms; I made the reply half way jokingly, but I really wanted a challenge. I don't believe in party politics nor left/right dynamics so we already eliminated historical imperatives, tribalism and virtue signaling :D

You made a very incisive question. It is difficult to describe my political leanings and this was very conflicting to me a couple of years back. The only hard beliefs that I have are local organization (comunal overseeing of basic needs and its solutions) and mutual aid (in-group and out-group). Nothing else.

Today I don't even believe in human rights. Just in basic decency and denying people their want to step on everybody else's life (unless actually asked to). And of course, I believe in violence as last resort in case the other two don't work. Maybe I am just over-saturated with systemic issues, but I truly believe people in our time became extremely backwards (prude, passive-aggressive and manipulable).

Am I a conservative? I truly believe conservative is but the first instinct of an ignorant mind; not a political or intellectual theory but a simple practice. I have been years searching for a true conservative intellectual to only find prudes, dum-dums and sold out pseudo-academics. Liberals and Leftists on the other hand seem more respectable to me, but don't seem able to give their life for others. So, more smoke.

2

ClosetLink t1_j0x0h3t wrote

> Liberals and Leftists on the other hand seem more respectable to me, but don't seem able to give their life for others. So, more smoke.

I'm not sure I follow your logic here. Are you talking about, like... joining the military? What does that have to do with having logical and/or correct beliefs? And what about the many who do?

Unless you don't mean literally "dying", but rather things that help the lives of others (like healthcare, etc.), in which case I'm even more surprised by your conclusion, but won't ask more.

7

Opposite_Personality t1_j14x2p6 wrote

I despise police and military institutions. This logic of killing and smacking around people for freedom, the future and the children is all mentally challenged to me.

I mean actually rolling up your sleeves and serving ex middle class people that's living below bridges right now. Mobilizing for them instead of against them and their disgraced middle class dreams.

Capitalism as a system is in bankruptcy right now (probably already taken out by Technofeudalism, two complete steps backwards) and most people is still trying to fake normal, whatever that means.

1

DJ-Dowism t1_j119xi2 wrote

I find it's much more helpful to look at the policies you would be in favour of and why, rather than trying to find a name to label your political philosophy with. After all, there very well may not be a name that actually encompasses your personal views yet.

Even the two main streams of thought in "liberal" and "conservative" just indicate a desire to move forward or backward, or stay the same, whatever those concepts mean to you - and as polar concepts in the US in particular, they completely reversed within living memory anyway. Time was Republicans abolished slavery, yet later opposed Civil Rights, etc.

There's also the apparent fact that young people seem to begin more "liberal" and end their lives more "conservative", potentially making a farce of any attempts to assign objectivity to either viewpoint outside our relative distance from death, or identifying with concepts we found appealing in our formative years. As the world itself consistently always moves to the "left" over time, unless we each also move to the left throughout our lives we will inevitably simply become more "conservative" in comparison to current culture.

So to me it does much more come down to how you would actually like to see political structures built and executed rather than how you label that: ie. in the most practicably comprehensive sense, what are your preferred policies, and why?

2

Opposite_Personality t1_j14w805 wrote

That's exactly the problem to me, the eternal reversal and the eternal farce. I wouldn't endorse a single policy right now because it all leads to capital extraction from the lower clases. The system is illustrious in the obvious, it is right there in its name. It isn't called middle-classism. Even paying student debt would end up benefiting debt vultures. "Helping" Ukraine actually produces more capital extraction and more human loss.

I feel people voluntarily wants to be deluded all of the time.

The only meaning of current policies to me is bread and circuses. And I never was able to stand performative arts, really.

I can't stand party politics anymore. It didn't lead to something useful for the last 50 years at least. It only stands in the way of progress and keeps reassuring those capital transfers and extractions to perfection.

1

iiioiia t1_j0y9tmz wrote

> If you take the time to examine your beliefs and construct your own view of the world and how you see political structures best helping us, there should be no hypocrisy or conflict in your ideology.

This is assuming a pretty extraordinarily high level of intelligence on behalf of the individual. A short visit to /r/politics might give you an idea of the quality of humans we're dealing with here.

2

DJ-Dowism t1_j117cxi wrote

I honestly don't think it takes an extraordinary degree of intelligence to systematically view the world through an objective lens. What it does take is the will to embark on that journey. Which isn't to say everyone will reach the same destination either, although I do personally believe there are several irrefutable conclusions that have been proven as best courses from my own explorations, usually we are denied the ability to even discuss on this basis as the idea of forging our own path simply does not have much traction in our current culture.

Your example of r/politics is unfortunately a demonstration of furthering political tribalism, in my experience at least. It's not so much a demonstration of the average person's ability to objectively examine how they view the world so much as an indictment of how little that is encouraged by our culture.

EDIT: a word

2

iiioiia t1_j11bo8x wrote

> I honestly don't think it takes an extraordinary degree of intelligence to systematically view the world through an objective lens.

Well I disagree passionately! lol

The world is highly subjective and illusory, as a consequence of it largely running on top of the human mind whose behavior is a function of millions years of evolution (in conditions highly dissimilar to the present), as well as distortion due to culture, propaganda, and various other issues. I mean just take this philosophy subreddit for example - getting anyone to seriously discuss the truth value of a proposition is very often like pulling teeth!

> Your example of r/politics is unfortunately a demonstration of furthering political tribalism, in my experience at least.

The mind is naturally attracted to the extremes of any situation - discussions in politically oriented subreddits are a train wreck, but I propose what's even more interesting than that is that political discussions in most any community, regardless of average intelligence level, will also be a trainwreck. The classic example I always use is https://news.ycombinator.com, a forum populated by mostly highly intelligent programmers, engineers, etc - in technical threads, people are smart - but pop into a political thread and observe how IQ's and logical capabilities have been cut in half, at least. I believe there is something about certain topics that the mind just cannot compute without constantly generating errors.

I very much agree with you on culture though - I wouldn't find ot hard to believe that culture could count for half or more of the problem.

1

DJ-Dowism t1_j11dqvv wrote

Studies have shown that having ideas challenged which you associate with your identity, and in turn your group identity, are responded to neurologically in the same manner as physical threats, short-circuiting logical thought processes and exacerbating tribalism. Our identity and status within groups is as essential to our survival as access to food and water. This response often forces doubling down on existing beliefs even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. I'd imagine that's a big part of the effect you're describing. It's the same fight or flight response we experience when we perceive a tiger on a path in the jungle, and the same evolutionary pressures apply in many ways.

I would say it comes down to intentionally constructing processes of interrogating our beliefs as a culture. What's much more important than your base level of intelligence entering into a conversation is your willingness to actually explore concepts within that conversation. To truly engage in a dialog. To not feel threatened by entertaining conflicting beliefs. If that itself can become part of our group identity, this process is no longer existentially threatening.

Again though, I'm not saying there is actually a "one true way" to view the world objectively. It's a process we can choose to attempt to engage in, which we will never perfect, but brings much better results over time. It doesn't mean we're all going to agree, but we're at least going to be able to exchange ideas and move towards a better understanding of the world, together.

3

iiioiia t1_j11nlxl wrote

> Studies have shown that having ideas challenged which you associate with your identity, and in turn your group identity, are responded to neurologically in the same manner as physical threats, short-circuiting logical thought processes and exacerbating tribalism.

Agree, psychology textbooks and papers are informative - however, I think it's much more interesting if you observe the overwhelming amount of available evidence first hand: internet arguments. What you describe here is not surprising if one is considering people's System 1 powered, realtime intuitive reaction. But more interesting is that people regularly (and on some topics, usually/always) are literally not able to release themselves from a belief, or often even question their belief - individually, or with assistance. And even more hilarious: very often this occurs in a scenario where the individual in question is mocking the intelligence of other people...and often the people they are mocking are literally artifacts of their imagination.

Were this not so common[1] and therefore taken for granted as an unavoidable part of reality like the weather, I think it would get massive amounts of attention. And that it doesn't get hardly any attention (other than people complaining about it incessantly) suggests to me that there is something very, very strange about "reality".

> I would say it comes down to intentionally constructing processes of interrogating our beliefs as a culture. What's much more important than your base level of intelligence entering into a conversation is your willingness to actually explore concepts within that conversation. To truly engage in a dialog. To not feel threatened by entertaining conflicting beliefs. If that itself can become part of our group identity, this process is no longer existentially threatening.

Ah....now this is something I rarely encounter. Isn't it weird that with all the "experts" in the world, many of them on payroll in relevant positions, and with all the calls for "more critical thinking" we hear in the media, *no one seems to have put two and two together? I mean, you and I are surely not dummies, but are we that much smarter than others? Or is there perhaps something else going on?

> Again though, I'm not saying there is actually a "one true way" to view the world objectively. It's a process we can choose to attempt to engage in, which we will never perfect, but brings much better results over time.

Maybe aiming for objectivity is not the correct goal? If the problem space is fundamentally subjective (I believe it is), aiming for objectivity will fail indefinitely. I think is is perfectly plausible that our success and obsession with science may now be causing net harm to us, and maybe has been for quite some time with no way for us to realize it (since that would at the very least require thinking, and that topic has become as taboo as questioning religion was a hundred years ago - it is literally enforced at several levels, including the government and mostly all media).

[1] There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water"?

1