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Notes -
If I'd have to describe why I continue to stick with the left, despite having a lot criticism about both the workings of the national and international left, would be three points, not in a particular order:
I continue to believe that the climate crisis and the resource crisis continue to cause a large (not existential, but still considerable) threat to the stability of the modern society, that simply trusting technology and market-based solutions is not enough, and believe that proactive governmental action is needed both to combat its onslaught and mitigate its effects.
I believe the Nordic welfare state to be both one of the most humane models of society to be conceived thus far and particularly foundational for Finnish culture, and after studying it's history, believe that its based not only on ameliorative ("for-the-poorest-and-weakest") measures, but on a strong bedrock of direct state intervention in economy through SOEs and such and on a strong, combative labor union movement.
For all the possible criticisms that could be aimed at how it can be weaponized, I find the international human rights treaty framework to be an important fundamental stabilizing civic myth both internally for modern societies and for the existence of a global international community, and worry that many of the thing advocated and agitated by far-right nationalist and populist movements are chipping away steadily at this civic myth, leading to unpredictable consequences.
How does climate change threaten - at all - the stability of modern society? Let's say one of the worse posited outcomes happens, and hundreds of millions of africans or poor south asians are displaced - but europe, china, the US, etc manage any disruption technologically. How does this threaten 'the stability of modern society' at all? If 20% of the population dropped dead, or a dozen random cities got wiped off the map, inhabitants included, it'd be unfortunate, but society would survive - and climate change will do much less than that to the US or europe. (and we know this from history - plagues and wwi/ii).
Also: what's the "resource crisis"?
What is the myth specifically? Most people believe less in 'international human rights treaties' and more in a general sense that rights and democracy are necessary for all that is good, and specifically all that is good for happiness and prosperity for the people, especially the disadvantaged. This isn't really a myth, just a set of values and claims about their benefits. Do you mean that individual or collective rights aren't independent goods but rough gestures towards things that are generally contingently beneficial, but it's better for people to believe that protecting "rights" has some independent meaning or value beyond that contingency in some deontological vs consequential sense? I think the difference is deeper - everyone ("progressives") wants happiness and prosperity and freedom from want for all, and the larger part of 'international human rights' are just direct attempts to accomplish that - as opposed to (variously) struggle, complexity, duty, nation, race, beauty, etc.
Since the particular purpose of my statement in this subthread was simply to shortly present my essential beliefs, I am in fact not going to engage in further discussion of them here.
Fair enough. Often people make tangential statements with the intent of inviting further discussion, often they don't, hard to tell which.
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I'm going to hazard a guess that it's the former. Of the leftists I know and have engaged in political discussion with, all of the ones I actually find know their shit in any way belong to the "original" economic left (most of whom have a distaste for woke). There are even some tankies I'm fond of, despite vehemently disagreeing with them on almost every point about economics.
The DEI/woke-type leftists, on the other hand, are by and large painfully confused on every topic including their very own ideology.
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