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Notes -
Elon is a True Believer, and that's why he Backs Trump
https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-reentry-by-eric-berger
So there's been discussion of why Elon Musk put threw in so hard with Trump. What he gets out of owning twitter. I've long had a pretty simple and parsimonious explanation- he wants humanity to spread throughout the universe, and if democrats get in his way he will have to back republicans regardless of his other political opinions. Democrats got in the way.
This review of Reentry is, functionally, a better sourced argument for my intuition. I suppose as a religious fanatic myself I can recognize a fanatic of a different creed by instinct; I guess indifferent PMC types need to be reasoned into the conclusion. As an aside, this is why I'm less worried about woke than some of our other social conservative posters- I don't think I can point to it, but everything about them just screams 'these people sort of believe, in the sense that they don't really disagree, but not in the sense that they'll take licks for their ideology. Like, they're willing to ruin other people's lives over it, sure, but not their own'. Regardless, the actions of SpaceX point to being run by true believers:
That's one example. It's also not just about SpaceX being lean and nimble. It's about being true believers. Elon Musk literally actually believes that humanity spreading through the entire universe is the most important thing... ever, with no exceptions. And he's managed to convince the company that that is correct. Obstacles to this will need to be overcome or removed, such as by sending a guy with a flexible pole to lift up overhead power lines when your rocket engine passes through backroads in the rural south because a barge would take too long. NASA would have accepted the cost. Why? At the end of the day, they believe in going to space, sure, but they're not, like, fanatics about it. SpaceX are fanatics.
And SpaceX just consistently decides not to cash out and take easy money for the rest of their lives. Instead they plow the profits from that easy money into moonshots that push the possibilities of space exploration forwards by developing new technology. Why? I'll quote the review again:
It's actually pretty simple. He's not a perfectly rational money-maxxer because a perfectly rational money-maxxer would not be betting the entire company on moonshot technological progress no matter what the math says. People are risk averse when all they care about is purchasing power.
So how does this tie in with politics? Well, he bought twitter to back republicans because democrats were doing things like making him kidnap seals and record their emotional reactions to recordings of rocket launches, and other such stupid delays. It's extremely rational for Elon to conclude 1) a cooperative government will enable him to get to mars faster and 2) republicans will give him a cooperative government in exchange for support, democrats will never give him a cooperative government. Yes, he condemns woke, but a) woke doesn't have, like, an actual definition, so it can easily refer to the socialism-by-bureaucracy wing even if that's not totally standard b) I get the sense that a lot of the turn of opinion against him relies on woke-ish methods, with things like cancel culture allowing a corralling of left public opinion, and it's pretty reasonable to think he does too c) there's lots of wokeness or woke ideology involved in holding him back(especially with environmental stuff), and plenty of potential attacks on him from a woke perspective(I'm kind of surprised nobody's already tried to metoo him). Yes, he's conspicuously worried about birthrates, but space colonization essentially requires high human capital high tfr populations.
I wrote a post a few months ago about Gen Z not having enough grit, aggression and agency and willingness to go all in. In retrospect, I don't think it was my best work. Elon's plenty gritty. There's lots of lack of grit in modern society; the every-other-month-AAQC about how all marriages are gay marriages now is basically decrying that, because in modern marriages there's no going all in, doing whatever it takes, they're in concept similar to 'partnerships' among sexual minorities. I'm willing to make that argument but not making it here. Instead I wonder- is fanaticism a necessary component of grit? That certainly seems to be the difference between SpaceX and NASA. Is today's malaise just downstream of being unwilling to commit to things? The birthrate crisis, the military recruitment crisis- moderners just not wanting to burn their bridges and have no recourse but to see their commitment through?
I've rambled a lot here, but it seems convincing to me at least.
Yes. Yes it is. I 100% believe this and have vaguely gestured at it before. It's what I observe IRL all the time, every day, in almost every interaction with young-ish urban-ish people. A complete inability to commit to a task, a schedule, a version of the truth, an agreement, a responsibility, a shared model of the world, or even eye contact.
No idea why though. What went wrong?
What went wrong is that Western society lost its commitment to its founding religion and deepest set of moral principles.
Not only that, but we decided Christianity was uncool and needed to be remade in our image. No wonder we can’t commit to anything.
I'm sorry, but Western society was founded on Greek paganism. Christianity almost destroyed it once, and we only squeezed through after a thousand-year rut by deciding that Christianity as it was is uncool and remaking it in a different image. In fact, we to then continued to tweak away at it further to great effect for some 500 years more. No wonder that, having been left with such a strong cultural memory of this serving us well, we would eventually slip up and remake it again in a way that is bad without even realising how we screwed up.
What do you actually mean by 'Western society'?
Because yes, Greek influence is the substrate for west Eurasian civilization post-Alexander. But that includes Islamic societies and Indian Societies as well. That is, to say the least, a non-standard use of the term 'western society'.
What is typically meant by western society is societies founded on old Rome and Christianity. I assume you're referring to Rome's fall as the fault of Christianity(a very debatable and not supported by the evidence take; I presume you don't believe Roman mythology was literally true and ancient Rome fell because they didn't stay in the good graces of Iupiter, so I'm curious as to the mechanism for Christianity causing the fall of the Roman empire and the evidence for that mechanism because to all appearances Christianity actually briefly strengthened the Roman empire before it resumed its previous rate of decline), which BTW left a dark age of 300 years at most, not a thousand. But Christian institutions are the reason Roman knowledge was preserved. Christian institutions spread technological advances that lead into the industrial revolution quite directly. Christian institutions were the only thing that kept literacy alive in big parts of Europe.
Roman paganism(and you do know that Roman and Greek paganism were different religions despite the similarities, right?) was a dead man walking at the edict of Milan. An impartial observer in 300 AD probably would have expected Manichaeism or some kind of mystery cult to supplant it as well as Christianity. The fusion between Christianity and Roman culture built the greatest civilization the world has ever, or will ever have, known. Constantine's conversion came at a time when the crisis of the third century had essentially discredited Roman paganism and dealt a mortal blow to the empire. It was Christianity that brought the Germanic tribes into Roman culture; the early scientific texts weren't written in Latin as a tribute to Iupiter, but because of the influence of the Christian church. There's Christian stampings all over this stuff; even timekeeping is due to the Christian church needing to hold religious services at a particular time.
Without Christianity the Germanic tribes would have settled into their conquered Roman territory and acted like Arabs today(and indeed the Arabic golden age had outsize contribution from Christians and a decline in the Christian percentage is at least a reasonable contributing factor).
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There was no thousand-year rut. Christian Europe in the High Middle Ages had already overtaken Rome in terms of technological sophistication, with notable inventions in the period including spectacles, the windmill, mechanical clocks cheap enough to be installed in every village church, sandglasses which keep accurate enough time to be useful, and the architectural techniques needed to build the Gothic cathedrals. (Neither the Romans nor the Chinese could build anything like that). The translation of the key Greek and Arabic works into Latin had been completed by 1200, and at that point Western science and maths started to move ahead (most obviously in astronomy with Oresme). The fall of the Baghdad caliphate and Song China to Genghis Khan allow the West to move into first place, but we never look back and continue to forge ahead through the Renaissance, Commercial Revolution, Age of Exploration, Industrial Revolution, and American Hegemony. If we are not the same civilisation that built Notre-Dame, it is because of some loss of faith in the last hundred years, not because the Renaissance was a RETVRN to an older continuity. (And in any case, the implausibly effective rebuilding of Notre-Dame is strong evidence that we are the same civilisation that built it.)
I am less confident, but on balance believe based on Tom Holland's work, that the key ingredients of the thing that grows into Western Civilisation come together during the Ottonian Renaissance (950-1030), the Cluniac Reforms of Christian monasticism and worship (910-c.1130), the Gregorian Reform of the Church which grew out of Cluny (1050-1080), and the Peace of God movement (989 onwards). Those ingredients are Christianity, the example of Rome, and some kind of customary law or oligarchic cultural trait of the ascendant Germani that counteracts the worst aspects of Romanism. Greek paganism is only essential to the extent that Roman paganism is an offshoot of it (a point of great controversy among classicists).
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@hydroacetylene curious for your response?
See above.
Well yeah I saw but you’re not responding to the pagan accusations. :(
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I really don't think this is true. To the extent that Greek paganism contributed to Western society (that is, the actual society of people living in Europe and America) it is primarily by allowing us to regain lost scientific and engineering knowledge. The only reason that the Iliad is relevant to us is in the West that upper-class elites thought it was a pretty neat story. Democracy is nice but I don't think you can really call it foundational when most people in the West have only had the franchise for a hundred years at best.
To be provocative in my turn, Western society was founded on God, landowning aristocracy, and weirdoes (landlors or clergy) tinkering in their backyard.
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