There’s a sense in which this is a consequence of the nuclear family model. When children grow up, they move away and create their own life away from their parents, and the now grandparents end up with very little familial social support. Once they finish working, they have no role in society. In other cultures, the grandparents play a large role helping their children with child rearing and maintaining the household. But nuclear families struggle to involve them in a way that’s sufficient or fulfilling for them. Thus they go off to create new social ties among their cohort.
This creates freedom and individualism for the young, but puts high burdens on working parents, and for the old it means that you’ve got only a shadow of the role that the grandparent generation traditionally had.
There is also an environmental/industrialisation angle (the ideal of ruralised life in Florida and the reality of ersatz parades and lawns).
This is way apart from your point and so I’m sorry, but Florida has a really interesting dynamic, where conservationists and ranchers have teamed up against urban/suburban development.
Florida has a huge influx of people (1000/day, they say), and is a very hot market for developers. Ranchers tend to preserve Florida as at least it was since the Spanish arrived 500 years ago and started herding cattle there. The open spaces can still hold a lot of biodiversity and provide some important ecosystem services (especially regarding water filtration and runoff) for the population. Thus, ranchers and environmentalists have teamed up.
This unlikely association (tending to fall on opposite sides of heated debates elsewhere) formed a coalition that effectively advocated for a long time for the Florida Wildlife Corridor to be signed into law, which it finally was last year.
As a blue tribe biologist whose forays across the United States often lead into red tribe lands, Florida conservation issues were the place where I saw most blue-red cooperation of anywhere I’ve been. Working alongside cowboys and wealthy city conservatives buying ranches to hold them against development to be part of the FWC, a very bold conservation proposal (biggest conservation corridor in the country) made by blue tribe conservationists, negotiated with red tribe ranchers, and signed into law by a conservative government, it was an interesting dynamic.
An article on this:
https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/09/11/florida-ranch-habitat-conservation
Jesweez
1yr ago
I read something today which I have long thought deep down, but hadn’t really seen spelled out elsewhere.
Namely, the censoring done by the liberal left, while there, is rather mild in the scheme of things and is probably much less than the same left would be censored by the people it currently censors if that group was in power.
The quote that brought it to my mind was from here, on Richard Hannania’s substack. After a post discussing being banned by Twitter, he drops this at the end of the article.
The right-wing whining in particular gets to me, and another motivation here is I don’t want to end up like my friends… I don’t feel particularly oppressed by leftists. They give me a lot more free speech than I would give them if the tables were turned. If I owned Twitter, I wouldn’t let feminists, trans activists, or socialists post. Why should I? They’re wrong about everything and bad for society. Twitter is a company that is overwhelmingly liberal, and I’m actually impressed they let me get away with the things I’ve been saying for this long.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/saying-goodbye-to-twitter
The attitude of censoring opponents seemed to have crystallized for the left around 2016, where I distinctly remember the conversation centering around the limits of tolerating intolerant ideologies. (Which seems to have become fully settled by now, interesting to observe an ideological movement update in real time in that way).
Does Hannania have a point here? Is the issue that the right takes offense with censorship itself, or would the right if it actually gained back power censor in a much more strict and comprehensive way?
Imagine an alternate world where any time a kid expressed suicidal ideation, government employees would firmly nudge them towards euthanasia, and would jail you as a parent for protesting
I don’t know if it’s naïve, but I’ve always sort of assumed that transition is something which gets recommended after years of therapy where someone is consistently exhibiting being gender dysphoric.
I’m curious because I think this is a key point where left assumptions and right assumptions tend to diverge. Left assumption: you talk about gender dysphoria with a therapist and they evaluate you for a long time to make sure it’s actually there and is affecting your life in a severe way before recommending any life altering treatments. Right assumption: any old kid reads something online about gender fluidity, experiments with the idea for a short phase, the doctor algorithm says, dysphoric, boom here’s some hormones to take.
Idk which one it looks more like in reality.
Like, I think it’s fine that people transition, but I also know it’s easy to basically trick psychologists until I get prescribed Adderal. Right? So ideally transition would be there but you’d have to spend a huge amount of time and commitment to get anybody to open up the door where it’s locked up at.
That feels to me like a place where some common ground can be found? But maybe I’m also naïve there too, lol.
This is part of a bigger suspicion that all of our problems are solvable by understanding that there are fractions of truth claims in what both sides tend to offer, but it’s very unpopular to say so because we immediately perceive the other side as the worst consequences of their way of thinking rather than looking for where there is a bit of truth in what they say.
Jesweez
1yr ago
Tyler Cowen published an analysis of the “new right” today.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/10/classical-liberalism-vs-the-new-right.html
He illustrates the new right as a reaction against two factors: the pretty crazy level of what we’ve come to call wokeness on the left, and the capture of most of the main cultural institutions by the same left.
At the same time, there are signals that the woke left is declining in power and relevance (not quite a sure thing yet, but he lists a few signs that we’re trending this way).
Tyler does a good job in my opinion of fairly representing the views of the new right, while also laying out his own disagreements with the philosophy. These center around the idea that the new right is unlikely to be able to create a high trust society. Indeed, since 2016 we have had a precipitous decline in trust in our society, and while almost no one would disagree with this, the different sides would place the blame on different factors.
He finishes the piece:
The polarizing nature of much of New Right thought means it is often derided rather than taken seriously. That is a mistake, as the New Right has been at least partially correct about many of the failings of the modern world. But it is an even bigger mistake to think New Right ideology is ready to step into the space long occupied by classical liberal ideals.
Overall I think it’s an important piece and potentially a lot of the more thoughtful members of the new right might get a lot out of reading it.
Political movements often do a good job at identifying problems in society, but it’s usually their own internal quirks and flaws that end up being magnified if and when they do come to power. Politics tends to progress as these flaws become exposed, as one side reacts against the excesses of the other, and vice versa.
Whatever the case may be, it leads one to wonder whether the woke left and the new right are short term aberrations, specific to what will be looked back upon as a short period of time, or whether these are indeed the feedstock of long lasting ideologies that we’ll be stuck with.
Jesweez
1yr ago
America's credibility in foreign policy was never lower (in the 21st century) than the start of 2022.
I mean, the whole lying to our allies about WMDs was probably a much bigger credibility blow.
Even now Putin uses Iraq rhetorically as precedent for aggressive invasions.
The interview with the father complicates this.
Guy was more concerned with the possibility of whether his son might be gay than whether or not he murdered a bunch of people.
If he was gay, it could make sense that he internalized some of the hatred coming from a meth addicted/extremely homophobic dad.
Will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
Although, fuck, we need a new national sport. The ‘guess the motivations of this week’s mass murderer’ game is getting pretty dark.
Jesweez
1yr ago
University systems now screen out 80% of faculty hires on "diversity" scoring before even passing the remaining resumes on to the hiring committee to be judged on merit.
Source?
This is a good post, although I think you’re going to face pushback on that conformist name.
The conformists seem to be the ones who keep “not-conforming” to the structures of their day?
Then once they do create an alternative belief structure, historically those beliefs tend to splinter into a million little factions and flavors. E.g. Protestantism and socialism.
Isn’t it just because Hungary represents a European country which went right wing authoritarian, and that’s important if your worldview values western liberal democracy?
(Or if you’re a socialist it’d be salient too. Liberals and socialists make up the core mainstream Reddit users).
Jesweez
1yr ago
Yeah, haha you’ll have to excuse me.
I took a break from this place for a bit and it was comedic for me to gawk at the take that young women are liberal because they want big strong immigrants to come mate with them.
It might not be wrong btw. I’m pro immigration and I tend to find foreign women really hot. Who knows if deep down that’s my real motivation?
Carry on, as you were!
Jesweez
1yr ago
Dude. Bake or roast some cruciferous veggies with some root vegetables. Add some salt and butter. It’s divine.
I think I agree that religion can offer group selection benefits to a society and that this likely has been relevant in history.
Some of it also may have just been by chance as well, humans like a good story and maybe some of these religions are just very successful memes that do a good job at lighting up our neurons in a way that reproduces itself well. We should be careful to not fully confuse evolutionary fitness on the memetic landscape with fitness on the landscape of intergroup competition.
But it’s definitely true that it’s a useful lens. How else do we explain for example that once a man came out of a cave with a prophetic vision, and within one generation a group of desert nomads have conquered half of the known world, and that the territory they originally conquered still maintains their religion and often too their language some 1500 years later. That was a highly successful cultural meme which was the main driver leading a backwater ethnic group to huge social and linguistic power.
But if we accept this conclusion then we can also argue that secular societies are incredibly evolutionarily fit in the landscape of the modern world. And I believe this to be true. The intergroup competitive landscape is not what it was in the pre-modern world. If a modern secular country were to become deeply religious, there may be consequences in the level of their decision making which puts them at a disadvantage relative to other countries. Even if you have trouble accepting that conclusion, if we’re working from the thesis that a societies’ worldview determines evolutionary outcomes at the scale of the group, were confronted with the fact that it’s the secular countries which lead the world and that “your society having one religion they all believe” is currently inversely correlated with measures of human development, as well as with geopolitical power.
If we’re using an evolutionary lens to explain these things (which I think is quite useful and a fun way to look at history), we might also acknowledge that sometimes the evolutionary landscape itself shifts and favors certain adaptations over others. I’m waiting for any non-diverse mono-religious society to rise to global prominence to prove this thesis wrong, but I have trouble even imagining such a thing occurring in the modern world. I just don’t think it’s one of the favored adaptations for our current landscape.
Jesweez
1yr ago
I’m pro immigration and I agree, send them where people express desire to help them
Jesweez
1yr ago
Because people from conservative backgrounds are more likely to prioritize marriage and more likely to marry young?
What else would be the explanation?
Jesweez
1yr ago
If anything liberals as a demographic are far more exposed to crime than conservatives are.
Conservatives are the more dominant demographic in suburbs and rural areas.
Jesweez
1yr ago
Fundamentally, the motte is for two things:
-
Gawking at/criticizing the latest thing the wokes did. Wondering whatever will the non-wokes do in their guerrilla war.
-
Peacocking elaborate or strangely alluring normie-repellent beliefs.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. But that’s just what the forum is for.
It’s cool, we’re all here because we’re female peacocks. No hate <3
I think Lex Fridman’s interview with Kanye West was an amazing example of this.
If you know anything about Lex Fridman, the guy is obsessed with reading about the horrors of history and taking it very seriously. He’s also Jewish and of course had a family history of experiencing everything that went down in Europe. But it’s almost secondary to how much he reads and tries to understand why humans commit atrocities. Very serious person about these issues. It’s gotta be a core trigger for a person like this to make light of what happened in WWII, or the Soviet Union, etc.
So he interviews Kanye, and with this background, you just know that every time Kanye says something like “Jewish media” — there’s pits full of bodies flashing behind Lex’s eyes.
But man does he keep it stoic. He even gets personally attacked during the interview. Equated with the Jewish media and everything! Later goes on to confess that it hurt him when Kanye lashed out at him. But throughout the entire thing, you can tell he’s striving with every ounce of himself to be open and calm and understanding/compassionate to the human in front of him, while also being true to his own principles and calling out the bullshit where he sees it.
Kind of an inspirational example of not allowing yourself to shut down into angry/closed off mode, in my opinion.
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