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The future Liberals want by Noah Smith on substack. It’s not that interesting a vision really: the future of the West is highly diverse, urban, self-expressive (trans accepting), and abundant with oh thanks an olive branch for conservatives.
I think the bizarre thing about this is that Noah — as woke, neolib as it comes — felt the need to write this at all. Everyone knows this is the vision; it’s all we hear about! Conservatives all know that this is what is on offer if society remains on autopilot towards the future too.
What strikes me about it is a vision of total anomie and dissolving of any sense of common culture and this is supposed to be good. Each nations singular (or maybe 2-3 tops) religion replaced by anything or nothing. Each national ethnic group replaced by a multicultural hodge podge with inclusion and acceptance for all. Diversity of income (inequality). Imagine there are no countries…
I can’t help wonder what families are supposed to be like in this vision — or indeed if they really exist. Is a world of radical self invention fuelled by technology compatible at all with human flourishing as its always been known: freedom to choose the burdens we bear for maximum meaning. What if blank slatism wasn’t a description of the world, but a challenge!
It just all seems so ugly. Most people have poor taste so radical self invention will be mostly just ugliness like architecture ripped from its patrimony and place. If politics ultimately springs from aesthetics, this liberalism is eventually doomed (but not before it wins and destroys what little of left of pre-modern life).
I've wondered whether I should make some kind of post about why neoliberal (so to speak) visions are so ugly. Like when the Soviets or Nazis dreamed big they dreamed a perfect world, where people were strong and brave and smart and beautiful. (nevermind the pile of corpses just out of frame)
But then you compare that with whatever the hell this is. This was a Green poster for the most recent German election. Forget about whether or not it's feasible. Their idea of a utopia is just ugly (and never mind all the weird elements that frankly make it look like a far-right parody of what a liberal would want)
Liberals at the moment seem very bad at articulating what kind of a world they want to create. More and more I wish the Soviet Union hadn't fallen; we've just gotten so pathetically complacent without a rival ideology
I'm curious why you describe the idea of utopia depicted in the poster as "ugly." The poster itself is not aesthetically pleasing -- the color scheme is pretty awful -- but is the scene it depicts any uglier than, say, this one?
I also don't get your claim that "Liberals at the moment seem very bad at articulating what kind of a world they want to create" -- doesn’t the poster do just that? It apparently does clearly enough for you to opine that said world is "ugly."
I mean, yes, obviously? The grafitti alone, to say nothing of all the people who've made themselves ugly.
Hm, I had to look pretty hard to find graffiti, and there is one person with pink hair; I am not sure who else depicted there can be described as having made themselves ugly (and I have certainly seen shades of dyed hair which are not at all ugly). So, I am guessing that that is not what the OP had in mind.
Pink hair, blue lipstick is a terrible combination, not to mention the septum piercing and maybe the person is blind, hinted at by the sunglasses, which is why they can't tell the person they are cuddling is a bearded lady. Or maybe not a lady, just a guy who can't grow more than a very scraggly beard.
Mostly it's the terrible smirky expressions on the faces. Nobody is smiling, they all have that quirked-lip smug look, like they are constantly thinking "look how great and unconventional I am, scaring the normies, congratulate me and validate me for being stunning and brave!", which is very unattractive.
To be fair, I would say that's an extremely accurate depiction of the pink-haired types in the poster.
The funny thing about many of these people who really badly try to distinguish themselves as unique is that they still adopt much of the same underlying beliefs and values as the mainstream does, they just tend to proclaim it louder, take marginally more radical positions, and pretend that makes them "subversive". It's difference in the most trivial and safe manner possible, the type that's more likely to get you applauded instead of burned for heresy.
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You had to look hard? There isn't an un-defaced building visible.
Undercuts are ugly, pink hair is ugly, whatever that beard creature is on the left is ugly. Almost everyone is fat and multiple people sport symbology of terrorist groups. And the vandalised pride flag is the most conceptually ugly thing in the world.
You can tell exactly when gay men lost control of the movement, because gay men are good at design and prefer things to be pretty.
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It feels vaguely alt-right-twitter-fascist to argue aesthetics like this, but come on. Everyone in that illustration is obese, save the two women wearing burkas, and though I personally rather like the way they look, the intention of a burka is to make women less attractive. Both buildings in the background have graffiti, including a delightful short paean to "CLIT" on the front door of the apartment building.
Opinions differ on the aesthetic quality of tattoos and piercings, but if you ask me they can be attractive only in isolation. When everyone in the foreground has a tattoo, piercings, or both, it's hard to argue that looks good.
And, sigh, though I don't personally have a problem with it.... it's worth saying the quiet part out loud: less than a third of the people in that illustration could be mistaken for ethnic Germans. That's a fine vision for America, but in a country where ~90% of citizens have European ancestry, what is that trying to say? What would it say if I put together a poster of my vision for South Africa and 3/4 of the people depicted were white?
At least the woman on the bike may have some muscles under her fat and be strong as well as chunky. She does seem to be doing work, riding a delivery bike of plants and small fruit trees.
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I'd point out that despite the perceived lack of ethnic Germans, just about everyone in that picture seems okay with each other. If anything, there's a strong message being sent about assimilation into the beliefs of the progressive West - a world in which they didn't let their national or religious backgrounds divide people into certain locations. Indeed, the two seemingly Middle Eastern characters don't mind being around people who are engaging in some fairly sinful (by Islamic standards) activities.
It's assimilation into a mindset that, while not totally Western, is certainly closer to the West than it is any other culture's.
Just about everyone in the picture is only engaging with one other person, generally the one they're banging, and ignoring the rest. Notably, not one person is actually helping someone else, or improving the community.
They don't 'mind' anyone, but neither is anyone helping the cripple in the street in front of them, or cleaning up the graffiti, or supporting the local businesses repair the damage that still leaves metal shutters instead of windows. This is a government that might pave the roads, but isn't clearing out the hornet nest between residential housing projects. If the utopian vision of the future isn't helping the less fortunate or past victims in times of relative plenty, what is the expectation when things go bad?
There's a saying that the opposite of love isn't hate, but apathy. The opposite of a cohesive identity isn't hatred of all other identities, it's indifference. Socially indifferent, atomized people don't create strong communities, or support strong social networks, because when the primary unit of caring is yourself and what matters to you, subsidizing someone else's welfare is a burden on you, and other people's misfortune is their own problem. The wheelchair person in the road may be getting a disability check, but no one is is offering her a push so that (s)he can go outside and walk the dog without pushing forward with one hand alone. No one is clearing a path on the side walk out of consideration, so that they one-free handed wheelchair-bound person isn't literally in the middle of the road, relying on bikers or vehicles to not hit them.
A cohesive social identity poster wouldn't have had everyone ignorring eachother, but people doing things as a group, not just with maybe one other person. Groups sharing a meal, or playing team sports, or cleaning up their communities, or helping eachother in small ways like helping a wheelchair person cross the road or use a sidewalk.
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Well yeah, 'cos they're all banging each other (at least that is what I take from the visible PDA). Except the dad and kid, and I'm not even sure that is the kid's dad. It could be the mother's boyfriend in their polycule.
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Really? The woman with pink hair is not obese. Nor the woman in the wheelchair. Nor the two people making out. Nor the guy talking on his cell phone. Nor anyone on the balconies, other than maybe the exercising woman. In fact, there is almost no one in the pic whom I would call particularly obese.
Re the demographics of the pic, that is a different question than re whether the scene is ugly. And someone else noted that this was displayed in a particular area, the demographics of which might be different
I'm pretty sure that's a guy, if you mean the one on the top left doing a yoga pose. They've got a beard. Not that that means anything nowadays, what with "men can get pregnant too, women can have penises".
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Technically, you can be unhealthily overweight (BMI >25) without being obese (BMI >30). The two people making out are definitely at least overweight.
Medicine considers obesity a disease, one that is preventable. This supposed utopia has multiple visibly diseased people, suffering from a preventable condition.
Another minor point is the raccoon. It is an invasive species in Germany. A "Green" utopia should surely be free of invasive species. Or maybe they've been influenced by American media so much that they think it's normal to have raccoons living in cities. (Curiously, the squirrel depicted is the native red squirrel and not the invasive American grey squirrel. The Greens don't seem to have a coherent stance on invasive species.)
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"Obese" is a quite low bar to someone seemingly used to American levels of fatness. It doesn't only mean "unable to leave the house because he is too wide for the doorframes.".
No, it does not. But, again, which of the people is obese under that lower standard?
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The couple on the front right look like they put effort into looking bad.
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