An Unreal Existence

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At the end of the 20th century people believed in the truth.  While they had several truths, — liberalism, conservativism, classic Communism of the kind once espoused by Che Guevara and in places a naive form of apocalyptic Islam — at least each believed the world’s problems could be solved if their truth should triumph over the rest.

The clash of civilizations since September 11, 2001 has left every culture wounded and guilty in its own way.  Western civilization, dominant through the modern era appears to be destroying itself in self-hatred, literally choosing extinction.  “In 2015, all European Union countries had a sub-replacement fertility rate.”  With the replacement fertility at 2.33, the average for the EU was 1.58. At the same time Islam was tearing itself apart in a global civil war while the United States was riven by discord.

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No one seems to have the answers any more.  Technological warfare only seems to increase entropy rather than reduce it.  Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan are stories of one set of villains replacing another.  So many Black Swans have appeared that they are no longer novelties.  The old status quo faces the possibility that Brexit, Trump, Catalonia and the North Korean nuclear breakout far from being exceptions to the rule are harbingers of things to come.

What seems to have changed is our mental furniture though we don’t quite understand how it happened. Globalization has allowed drastic mutations that biologist Ernst Mayr notes often originates “in a relatively small and isolated population” to propagate very rapidly into a new normal.  The new normal in Europe is depopulation, don’t ask how because the periphery can now become the center with surprising speed.  The New York Times report that “major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself” are no longer funding politicians like Hillary but the Resistance itself should come as no surprise.

“We’re in a disruptive period, and when we get through it, the progressive infrastructure landscape may look different,” said Gara LaMarche, president of the Democracy Alliance, a club of wealthy liberals who donate at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups.

The new variability is overwhelming the old political elite. As the World Wars and the Black Death demonstrated upheaval can produce wild mood swings in a populace. “The tremendous emotional shock [of the Black Death] … created a state of … depression and sometimes even panic” which turned people to fanaticism as others sought scapegoats for their troubles or lost themselves in a debauchery made famous by Poe’s Masque of the Red Death and the wild abandon of Weimar.

The underlying disruption is creating a similar volatility today.  Currently we are obsessed with 71 genders but a nuclear or biological disaster can can flip decades of political correctness and deference to technology into their opposite. Considering all the freedoms and privacy the West has already given up to preserve the status quo the mantra “we can’t let it change us” is mockingly ironic.  It is change, not changelessness which is characteristic of the present.

Perhaps the world is living through history’s first information epidemic and like the medievals who fell to unseen pathogens we can scarcely understand the catastrophe befalling us.  Many are at a loss to explain entropy and anomie on a scale never seen before.  But we cannot respond effectively to chaos without realizing the threat is not merely physical but an information corruption challenge.

At least Hillary’s call for more censorship on social media shows the old establishment is belatedly waking up to the informational nature of the threat without fully understanding it. “This is a new kind of Cold War — and it is just getting started,” Clinton said in a speech at Stanford University, using the language of 1945 to describe 2017.  Clinton seems to regard the machinery of manipulation per se as acceptable as long as it does not fall into the wrong hands and is probably counting on it to restore order.  She fails to see that manipulation itself — the Narrative — is the root problem and that the Narrative is likely to master her rather than the other way round.

Human sanity was long anchored in reality. Religions might have been flawed but they usually tried to explain things in the light of contemporary knowledge. Common people spent the greater part of their day in contact with society and family in a smartphone-free world that seems to be lost forever.  They were innoculated against much craziness. That world had a self-centering property that is now missing.

Today we have live in an environment where whole populations are immersed in an ocean of deliberate lies. People can believe anything — and often do.  The Narrative is malware corroding our sense of humanity and reality.  Instead of increasing privacy so data miners cannot engage in the targeted lying which makes “fake news” so effective we decrease it the better to help the manipulators.  We’ve reached the point where having real human networks instead of social ones is slightly suspicious.  “Fear the man,” we are told when pondering Steven Paddock, “with no digital footprint.”

Perhaps humanity was better off with rival truths rather than rival lies. In retrospect the status quo got bitten by its own creation in 2016 after Putin wrested a surprising chunk of the Narrative from the Gatekeepers. But the politicians far from learning their lesson want the handlers to take a firmer grip on the snake instead of defanging it. It will bite them again and more venomously next time.

 

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Diogenes
Diogenes

“And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” – Poe

hardscrabble farmer

That was very well phrased.

jimmieoakland
jimmieoakland

“No one seems to have the answers any more.” Truly spoken.

For the past forty years, I have mentioned to my friends and family the war on Reality that is raging around us. Like Seinfeld, I’ve been sitting for years with a cola in my hand watching a guy in a commercial drinking the exact same product. Except in the commercial, the man is surrounded by girls in bikinis riding jet skies, sun and sand. None of that is happening in my living room, and I don’t think I’m wrong in feeling cheated. Promises have been made.

Now I find I’m having a harder time deciding where I stand on a lot of issues. Should Catalonia be independent? On the one hand, nations states don’t ever willingly let big chunks of their country just decide they don’t want to play anymore, and I understand that. On the other hand, people should have the right to self-determination, and I respect that. Didn’t we fight a civil war over this one time? What did we decide, and is that relevant anymore? Watchful waiting seems to be the best approach.

Should guns, can guns, be restricted by legislation? In a country with more guns than people, it seems unlikely, but shouldn’t we at least try? I doubt that any law could have prevented the latest explosion of violence in Las Vegas, but you never know.

How about global warming? Like the weather, my opinion changes every day. Check with me tomorrow.

Now I’m supposed to know how many genders there are? Oh, please.

Somehow, I don’t believe more technology, more education, or more voter participation is the answer to whatever is happening. Technology is a great servant, but an indifferent master. As long as something works, it matters not whether it actually improves peoples’ lives, or merely makes their lives more stressful and harried. Those are qualitative considerations, which never trump what can be measured with certainty. If it bleeds, it leads, bigger is better, faster is better than slower, and novelty is preferred to the tried and true. We all at least can agree to that, can’t we?

Education is useless if you are educated in the wrong thing, and the wisdom of the crowd is questionable. Besides, you have to be given real choices to make any difference, and when did that happen last?

I have no idea what should be done, or how it should be accomplished. I’m pretty sure that we will not find the answer by following more of the same. The answers may well come from looking to the past instead of looking forward to colonies on Mars, more electronic gizmos, and tastier selections at the food court. My sense is that we have over looked something that people once knew for certain in their hearts but have forgotten. We must recover that knowledge to have a chance at a better future, or any future.

But what do I know?

Solus
Solus

Jimmieoakland,

But what do I know?

It sounds like you know a lot more than our public intellectuals, let alone our so-called leaders. Congratulations, and I hope it does you some good.

Iconoclast421
Iconoclast421

You said “never trump”. lol

James the Wanderer

Using any excuse at hand (religious fanaticism, mental illness, bigotry) the liberals will try to repeal or repress the 2nd Amendment. The problem is that the 2nd is rooted in reality (evil people will seek unlimited power over others, and use government as the mechanism for it) and efforts to declare self-defense (the root of the 2nd, self-defense against totalitarian government) illegal are doomed to failure. You can still be out-gunned and lose, but a homegrown guerrilla movement would still defeat the Greatest Military in the World ™.
Gun control as defined by the left is a frank admission that they cannot hope to win a battle of ideas, as theirs have already been shown to be worse than Capitalism(tm) and even Crony Capitalism(tm), the version currently in practice. I hate GoldmanSachs and JPMorganChase and all their buddies, but even they are better than the socialist / cummunist party and it’s American variants Antifa and BLM.
We can’t afford to feed the FSA now; just wait until the times get really tough.

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