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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   32493 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Nobody seems to talk about the RU-UA war here anymore. I guess it's because we're saturated with it everywhere else.

Yet given that Ukraine has launched what is unquestionably the largest offensive since the Kharkov surge in late September when it took back wide swathes of territory, I believe a status update is warranted.

First, it is immediately clear that the Russians are much more prepared this time. The area that Ukraine took back in autumn was barely defended by a rag-tag group of volunteer militias. That was a big lapse by the Russian general command, which also led to the big mobilisation drive. This time is different.

Even pro-UA accounts like Julian Röpcke are conceding that Ukraine is losing lots of armored vehicles with very marginal gains. Western officials like the CIA chief or the US foreign secretary have all pointed out that the aftermath of the offensive will shape upcoming negotiations. Given that Ukraine has little to show for their offensive thus far, this inevitably casts a dark shadow on any prospects for large territorial compromises. Why would the Russians give the Ukrainians something at the negotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield?

To my mind, the best that Ukraine can hope for now is a stalemate. This war has shown that in the era of ubiquitous ISR capabilities, trying to surprise your enemy is much harder if he's on his toes (which the Russians weren't in the autumn, but they are now). Consequently, offensives are simply far costlier and harder. The Russians had the same problems, which is why capturing Bakhmut took such an absurdly long time.

For those of us who would want to see a negotiated settlement, the reality is that neither side is running out of money or arms. Russia is spending a moderate amount of money and the West can keep supplying Ukraine enough to keep going for years if the decision is made that defensive action is the way to go. The only way this war ends is if the West tells Ukraine to give in and accept large territorial losses in return for a settlement and possibly security guarantees. Such an outcome would be nearly impossible to sell to Ukraine's domestic public and would almost certainly end the career of whoever was leading the country, including Zelensky. Whatever comes out of this war, I'm not optimistic about Ukraine's long-term prospects.

I don't know what else there is to talk about. The outcome of the war, whatever that may be, has been decided by now by people with significantly larger dicks than ours and novelty of combat between two near-peer nations has worn off. I assume that, when the news is reporting the war, the Ukranians are making progress, and when the news goes dead silent on the war then the Russians are making progress.

I care primarily about the personal impact: that I get to suffer inflation and energy scares due to my government's (or indeed, every western government's) complete and total aversion to energy security. As for morals, the ultimate moral of life, learnt most bitterly in the years before, is that the strong do whatever the fuck they want to the weak, and the weak suffer and invent slave moralities in order to pretend that they are not suffering.

I think your assessment is more or less accurate, except for the bit about slave morality. The point of slave morality is that it does, in fact, subvert the oppressors. It's not just a cope. Hence the centuries of Christian dominance.

That was always strange to me. Who are the real Masters if Slave Morality is strong enough to subdue Master Morality? It reminds me of the JQ paradox, that Jews are simultaneously weak, cowardly, dissolute, and pathetic, and also somehow powerful, full of chutzpah, fanatical, and fearsome. Does Nietzsche ever address why Master Morality is not naturally dominant since it's apparently so awesome and life-affirming?

Obligatory "this is complicated, I'm not a Nietzsche scholar, etc."

Beyond Good and Evil says...

Oh.

195. The Jews—a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as they themselves say and believe—the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM that the SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALS commences.

Yes, he is literally attributing slave morality to Judaism.

Nietzsche uses culture, politics and morality more or less synonymously with race. I'm not clear on whether that's upstream or downstream of his form of social Darwinism.

262. ... A type with few, but very marked features, a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved, and reticent men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations; the constant struggle with uniform UNFAVOURABLE conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming stable and hard. Finally, however, a happy state of things results, the enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no more enemies among the neighbouring peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment of life, are present in superabundance. With one stroke the bond and constraint of the old discipline severs...

Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great danger; this time shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart, into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching, that everything around them decays and produces decay, that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow, except one species of man, the incurably MEDIOCRE. The mediocre alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves—they will be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them! become mediocre!" is now the only morality which has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.—But it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly love—it will have difficulty IN CONCEALING ITS IRONY!

In other words, hard times make strong men. Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Nietzsche argued master morality starts out dominant, but that slave morality was advantaged in times of prosperity. As for how it actually overpowers the masters, uh...

261. ... In fact, conformably to the slow rise of the democratic social order (and its cause, the blending of the blood of masters and slaves), the originally noble and rare impulse of the masters to assign a value to themselves and to "think well" of themselves, will now be more and more encouraged and extended...

This is all I could find for the actual mechanism of action. It's not clear, to me, whether he thought the slave-revolt could succeed without miscegenation. The modern liberal answer is "of course," but that hangs on some combination of the marketplace of ideas and class consciousness. I don't think Nietzsche endorsed a recognizable version of either of those, so he may have really leaned on race-mixing. And it's just sort of casually thrown in there. Weird.

Well, I've learned something today.

I think it's part of Orwells alliance of the High and Low against the Middle. The High, the true masters, believe master morality but enforce slave morality on the Middle, to keep them from being a threat.

If you are thinking about the political theory bits in 1984, Orwell doesn't write about an alliance of High and Low against the Middle. He writes about a PvP battle for power between High and Middle and a PvE battle for survival of Low vs grinding poverty.

I'm sure Moldbug was inspired by Orwell when he wrote about the High-Low alliance against the Middle, but Orwell was both using the words differently (in Moldbug's version, "Low" refers to the underclass, and "Middle" to the general mass of productive workers, whereas Orwell uses "Middle" to refer to an alternative elite and "Low" to refer to the proletariat as a whole) and making a different point (Orwell was pointing out that politics is by default a battle between factions within the elite using the masses as pawns, and that most movements claiming to be uprisings of the Low are actually kayfabe).

Yet that does not explain why Christianity overtook the Roman Empire, given that its first adherents were low-status losers literally thrown to the lions for the sport of the roaring crowds.

They were able, in time, to convert virtually the entire Roman elite through sheer force of conviction. Tom Holland has written a great book on the rise of Christianity, it certainly helped shed some of my cynicism. Come to think of it, idealism is in fact a very powerful force. Sometimes for very destructive ends (e.g. many of the most brutal communists truly believed in their utopia).

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