a 2023 issue of Maria Popova's Marginalian offers a glimpse about the adults in the room:
"A democracy is an achievement, at a point of time, of a limited society, i.e. of a society that has some natural boundary. Of a true democracy (as the term is used today) one can say: In this society at this time there is sufficient maturity in the emotional development of a sufficient proportion of the individuals that comprise it for there to exist an innate tendency towards the creation and re-creation and maintenance of the democratic machinery.
Out of this insight can arise a kind of formula for predicting the fate of a society:
It would be important to know what proportion of mature individuals is necessary if there is to be an innate democratic tendency. In another way of expressing this, what proportion of antisocial individuals can a society contain without submergence of innate democratic tendency?"
I have been pondering lately something I have heard said more than once: that the U.S. is currently (and has been for some time) going through adolescence. This analogy works for me when I think about the kind of child-like unquestioning patriotism that I believe was more the norm in the mid-20th century, when, for the most part, people of both parties loyally placed their hands over their hearts and quoted the Founding Fathers, as if they were not only there as role models but as protectors. Rebelling against the established hierarchy was not so trendy back then, at least I think not.
That began to change in the late 60s when questioning and rebelling against authority became a major pastime. I was just coming of age, and the cultural change that era signaled has continued to unfold in various forms ever since. Maybe the underlying question here is "How can I get free from under the oppressive yoke of my parents and their generation?"
Adolescence is also a time of seeking to establish identity through forming tight knit social groups that exclude those that have formed their own groups around contrasting values and tastes. The underlying question here is "Who am I, and who are the people I belong with?"
It is also, for some, a time of seeking to know the world and the other through exploration outside of the community of origin. The underlying question here would be "What in the greater world is waiting for me to taste and experience?"
It is also, for some, a time of idealism, of seeking meaning, of aspiring to serve the higher good. The question - "What do I have to offer to the world?"
The resulting mix is chaotic, and adolescence is a bit of an enchanted forest for most, and can be a dangerous time.
I do think we are being called to transition to adulthood. Thank you for your essay, Daniel.
As a metaphor, it undoubtedly has a lot of limitations and can't be applied too literally. But it does seem to me that the U.S. in many ways tends to get stuck over-long in its phases, suffering from a sort of failure to mature, due perhaps to having been spoiled by (often ill-gotten) wealth as well as the effects of getting away with a lot of bad behavior. But we have our good qualities too, and maybe its not too late for the country to be shocked into starting to take more responsibility for its predicament. I really hope so.
Recently, my path has taken me to a point where I can see the time is to act, to no longer hope the systems we have in place will hold up any of the essential values needed to navigate the crises of the world. This election is at least, showing us the time to act, to be the adults, is now.
The stupidity and emptiness of the physicalist (a failure scientifically as well as in every other way) perspective you quoted from The Times exemplifies the horrid absence of mythos that Jung, near the end of his life, called a "terrifying tabula on which almost anything might appear," (I'm paraphrasing from memory). When British historian Arnold Toynbee studied the life cycle of civilizations, he found that civilizations declined when they no longer had healthy mythos. The nihilistic anti-mythos of materialism, a not-so-golden oldie --one famous British atheist said, "We're no more significant than mold growing on a shower curtain"-- is both dangerous to civilization and just stupid. And yet, post-modernist intellectuals keep tossing it at us like the most tired of rabbits pulled from the most disappointing of magician's hats. They take length or volume as their yardstick of significance to diminish us, which is a ridiculous way to measure significance. Even from that perspective, the size of a single human being is at an interesting midpoint between an atom and a galaxy.
If we instead use sentience as our yardstick, suddenly, humans loom as giants of significance, trivializing square light years of dead real estate out there in the relative vacuum of outer space. Trumpism is a psychic epidemic growing on the lifeless mold of nihilistic materialism, which attracts demented new religions like Trumpism and Q'anon in the way that feces attracts flies.
Our political problems are 100% psychic artifacts. They are merely the latest variants of mass psychosis on the left and right--see my recent work on the topic: https://zaporacle.com/mass-psychosis-on-the-left-and-right/. The answer to the pathology emerging from a collective psyche poisoned by toxic mythos is life-affirming, evolutionary mythos. This is why, in the immediate aftermath of discovering what I call "The Singularity Archetype" (which is about our evolutionary predicament) in 1978, I was commanded by the "muse" --best understood as the voice of the collective unconscious percolating up through the personal unconscious and into the conscious mind of the person who receives such overpowering instructions--to make my highest priority writing a sci-fi epic based on the ideas I had just discovered. In other words, I was being told to create a mythos, not more scholarly work (though I continued some of that too).
When a few years ago, Daniel, on a Zoom call, said his mother was "writing a dystopian sci-fi novel," I quipped, "Daniel, just says she's writing a sci-fi novel; dystopian and sci-fi are redundant." In other words, modern mythos, mostly found in sci-fi, are highly toxic as they are based on grim and stupid nihilism. It took me 45 years to complete the sci-fi epic I was commanded to create (there were many versions, but they weren't good enough until the one I published last Spring). It begins with a classic dystopian sci-fi setup but shows a possible path of evolutionary metamorphosis out of it. Even if only read by the right few, putting a life-affirming and evolutionary mythos into the collective unconscious still feels of paramount importance, and for this reason (besides it being in every form on Amazon and Audible), I've also made this lifetime of work available free to read or listen to for anyone interested in a different mythos (you'll find links to those free versions in the mass psychosis link above). It is our death cult mythos that is killing us and producing these political pathologies (mass psychosis); the antidote to that core, foundational cause is evolutionary mythos.
Thanks for posting the TikTok of the woman in Missouri talking about waiting in line at the courthouse. Have you seen the new Harris-Walz ad featuring rural white guys with beards going into the voting booth and voting for Kamala? It feels similar. There’s a deep, profound fed-upness being expressed in the voting so far. As others have said, I’m also feeling queasily optimistic.
please forgive my naivete, but I'd love to hear more about what you see as the issues with the New York Times. They have been a primary info source for me for election coverage, and it feels that they've spent so much time talking to election deniers, pro life nuts, etc. The coverage has made me feel crazy (and of course "crazy) doesn't begin to cover this moment in general), but I'd appreciate your insight as to the flaws in the reporting I've been consuming. Thank you.
If the AIs are doing the jobs though, where does any consumer get the money to consume with? People like Musk say they want UBI but that would be useless without other measures like rent caps, because if everyone gets an extra $1k per month, you can guarantee rents are going up by $1k pm. And EM and the like sure as hell won't be in favour of 'socialist' things like rent caps.
Personally I think the AI robot thing is a bit hyped, sure they can do things like checking out groceries or giving you fast food but full self-driving is a long way off (despite the claims) for example. I predict there will be a lot of layoffs when companies try to switch too early to AI and then a lot of re-hires when they find it doesn't work as advertised. Eventually, yes, it is a problem we need to solve though.
And as to UBI— I find the “Poverty Equilibrium” argument to be a very compelling reason why UBI won’t fully work, though it could be good occasionally just for moral, but I think even with the robots people will be fine. The majority of people find ways to thrive. Only a very small percentage are homeless and most of that is due to medical problems and not “the system.” At least not in the US.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but that’s what I observe.
No, I mean the ai ROBOTS. Like Optimus will be able to paint your house and pour concrete. Amazon trucks will drive themselves. Optimus can clean. Etc
I have self driving on the Tesla my partner and I share now and it works very well. Scary well. But I hardly ever use it, because it’s too law-abiding 😂 and no one really drives that conservatively where I live. Everyone drives aggressively and well over the speed limit.
I have full confidence that unless the government intercedes or he’s killed, Musk will create Optimus, because Teslas already work so well. Grok also is pretty good. He’s halfway there.
yeah I agree, in 20 years' time, sure, but for example at the recent Tesla event, the 'robots' were being remote controlled by humans and the humans were talking through a speaker in the robot body. the Boston Dynamics ones are much better, but still not ready to replace most human workers any time soon. But yes, they will get there, because the potential for profit is so massive
well, we want the convenience, but we also don’t want to be left with no means of paying for basic utilities and food, which is what would happen if it were suddenly possible to replace most workers with robots tomorrow. But overall, I agree with you that we will work it out, because it’s not going to happen tomorrow and we have time to design a system which works for most people, at least (although it may be fewer people than the current system works for)
Robots will also generate more growth and wealth, because people will be able to have new businesses using the robots. Likely entrepreneurial people able to access finance will thrive with the robots, but those who can’t access banking, like illegal immigrants, will be really screwed.
I mean actually full self-driving with zero interference from a human, not even having one in the car. From what I hear that is still not achieved, a human must be there, and paying attention, in case something unforeseen happens.
yes you’re right, I was thinking of the Tesla ones. But each one costs around 250k apparently, so unless they can get the price way down they may not be around for much longer in that format
Robots in all caps meaning when we really perfect them. Maybe it’s 10 years away or 20, but I think it’s inevitable. Also some promise with the brain organoids.
People are just not taking this seriously and they just don’t understand what’s at stake and they don’t want to know or be bothered or blamed. Or take any responsibility.
Hmmm on the one side you have the belief that everything is a social construct. On the other side, that meaning comes from God. Philosophically, nominalism vs. realism, respectively. I don't think the left can really unmoor themselves from the secular materialist worldview, which may be the biggest problem of all, i.e. the meaning vacuum you mention. How do we expect to reckon with this?
Also I get that you're saying Trump=evil but by putting "win" when talking about Trump winning are you saying any result that has Trump winning is somehow not valid? That seems to be what you are saying Trump is doing to any Harris wins result.
why can't the left move away from materialism? Marx was in favour of atheism but that part is not essential IMO. Ivan Illich is a good example of a non-materialist leftist (and other pastors from the Americas with similar views)
Well I think it was pretty essential to Marx. While Illich may have been a leftist, it would hardly overlay on top of what we in america today call leftist, as he was a traditionalist and I'm sure would not take to what the left are doing socially these days. The social constructionist types are necessarily opposed to God.
We’re willing to throw it all away in exchange for obscene amounts of ad revenue. But for a brief shining period of time we created immense shareholder value. A notable, if not laudable, achievement.
I’m tracking Iowa in some detail and combing through comment sections and running across quite a few people who say they are old republican women living in Iowa and they were around during the Roe decision and they are mightily pissed about Dobbs. They say they just voted blue for the first time in their lives.
“Rattner writes: “With unemployment having been at or below 4.1 percent for 30 months, we have a shortage of workers, not an excess.”
I’ve never bought this argument. We do have a “shortage” of workers but the unemployment numbers only reflect people who are have been actively looking for jobs in the last 6 months. Our employment numbers are low because there are a lot of people who learned to live cheaply or are on benefits post covid and not looking for work. This drove up wages but at a huge cost of increased spending on benefits, which is just one of the reasons we have skyrocketing debt. If true this would greatly favor the “harsh” policies Musk is suggesting.
If you didn’t see, Musk is openly saying they plan to crash the stock market and the value of the US dollar.
I’ve tried to think of what this would mean if they win. I have no expertise in guessing here and have gotten mixed opinions from those in finance but my immediate thought is that if you openly tell people that you plan to crash the dollar and the stock market then to me, if I was a person with money, I would immediately pull my funds out of the US stock market if Trump wins. This is also a signal to China and Russia to collectively pull funds out of the US stock market potentially causing an immediate crash that can then be blamed on the outgoing Biden administration/ Harris administration.
Please tell me I’m wrong / I hope the Iowa poll is right
As Bradley Whitford said recently, I am nauseously optimistic
a 2023 issue of Maria Popova's Marginalian offers a glimpse about the adults in the room:
"A democracy is an achievement, at a point of time, of a limited society, i.e. of a society that has some natural boundary. Of a true democracy (as the term is used today) one can say: In this society at this time there is sufficient maturity in the emotional development of a sufficient proportion of the individuals that comprise it for there to exist an innate tendency towards the creation and re-creation and maintenance of the democratic machinery.
Out of this insight can arise a kind of formula for predicting the fate of a society:
It would be important to know what proportion of mature individuals is necessary if there is to be an innate democratic tendency. In another way of expressing this, what proportion of antisocial individuals can a society contain without submergence of innate democratic tendency?"
I have been pondering lately something I have heard said more than once: that the U.S. is currently (and has been for some time) going through adolescence. This analogy works for me when I think about the kind of child-like unquestioning patriotism that I believe was more the norm in the mid-20th century, when, for the most part, people of both parties loyally placed their hands over their hearts and quoted the Founding Fathers, as if they were not only there as role models but as protectors. Rebelling against the established hierarchy was not so trendy back then, at least I think not.
That began to change in the late 60s when questioning and rebelling against authority became a major pastime. I was just coming of age, and the cultural change that era signaled has continued to unfold in various forms ever since. Maybe the underlying question here is "How can I get free from under the oppressive yoke of my parents and their generation?"
Adolescence is also a time of seeking to establish identity through forming tight knit social groups that exclude those that have formed their own groups around contrasting values and tastes. The underlying question here is "Who am I, and who are the people I belong with?"
It is also, for some, a time of seeking to know the world and the other through exploration outside of the community of origin. The underlying question here would be "What in the greater world is waiting for me to taste and experience?"
It is also, for some, a time of idealism, of seeking meaning, of aspiring to serve the higher good. The question - "What do I have to offer to the world?"
The resulting mix is chaotic, and adolescence is a bit of an enchanted forest for most, and can be a dangerous time.
I do think we are being called to transition to adulthood. Thank you for your essay, Daniel.
As a metaphor, it undoubtedly has a lot of limitations and can't be applied too literally. But it does seem to me that the U.S. in many ways tends to get stuck over-long in its phases, suffering from a sort of failure to mature, due perhaps to having been spoiled by (often ill-gotten) wealth as well as the effects of getting away with a lot of bad behavior. But we have our good qualities too, and maybe its not too late for the country to be shocked into starting to take more responsibility for its predicament. I really hope so.
Yeah, I’m with Franetta here, we are the adults.
Recently, my path has taken me to a point where I can see the time is to act, to no longer hope the systems we have in place will hold up any of the essential values needed to navigate the crises of the world. This election is at least, showing us the time to act, to be the adults, is now.
But who are the adults in this day and age?
Where are they hiding?
When will they show up?
Are we them?
Yes, we are.
The stupidity and emptiness of the physicalist (a failure scientifically as well as in every other way) perspective you quoted from The Times exemplifies the horrid absence of mythos that Jung, near the end of his life, called a "terrifying tabula on which almost anything might appear," (I'm paraphrasing from memory). When British historian Arnold Toynbee studied the life cycle of civilizations, he found that civilizations declined when they no longer had healthy mythos. The nihilistic anti-mythos of materialism, a not-so-golden oldie --one famous British atheist said, "We're no more significant than mold growing on a shower curtain"-- is both dangerous to civilization and just stupid. And yet, post-modernist intellectuals keep tossing it at us like the most tired of rabbits pulled from the most disappointing of magician's hats. They take length or volume as their yardstick of significance to diminish us, which is a ridiculous way to measure significance. Even from that perspective, the size of a single human being is at an interesting midpoint between an atom and a galaxy.
If we instead use sentience as our yardstick, suddenly, humans loom as giants of significance, trivializing square light years of dead real estate out there in the relative vacuum of outer space. Trumpism is a psychic epidemic growing on the lifeless mold of nihilistic materialism, which attracts demented new religions like Trumpism and Q'anon in the way that feces attracts flies.
Our political problems are 100% psychic artifacts. They are merely the latest variants of mass psychosis on the left and right--see my recent work on the topic: https://zaporacle.com/mass-psychosis-on-the-left-and-right/. The answer to the pathology emerging from a collective psyche poisoned by toxic mythos is life-affirming, evolutionary mythos. This is why, in the immediate aftermath of discovering what I call "The Singularity Archetype" (which is about our evolutionary predicament) in 1978, I was commanded by the "muse" --best understood as the voice of the collective unconscious percolating up through the personal unconscious and into the conscious mind of the person who receives such overpowering instructions--to make my highest priority writing a sci-fi epic based on the ideas I had just discovered. In other words, I was being told to create a mythos, not more scholarly work (though I continued some of that too).
When a few years ago, Daniel, on a Zoom call, said his mother was "writing a dystopian sci-fi novel," I quipped, "Daniel, just says she's writing a sci-fi novel; dystopian and sci-fi are redundant." In other words, modern mythos, mostly found in sci-fi, are highly toxic as they are based on grim and stupid nihilism. It took me 45 years to complete the sci-fi epic I was commanded to create (there were many versions, but they weren't good enough until the one I published last Spring). It begins with a classic dystopian sci-fi setup but shows a possible path of evolutionary metamorphosis out of it. Even if only read by the right few, putting a life-affirming and evolutionary mythos into the collective unconscious still feels of paramount importance, and for this reason (besides it being in every form on Amazon and Audible), I've also made this lifetime of work available free to read or listen to for anyone interested in a different mythos (you'll find links to those free versions in the mass psychosis link above). It is our death cult mythos that is killing us and producing these political pathologies (mass psychosis); the antidote to that core, foundational cause is evolutionary mythos.
Thanks for posting the TikTok of the woman in Missouri talking about waiting in line at the courthouse. Have you seen the new Harris-Walz ad featuring rural white guys with beards going into the voting booth and voting for Kamala? It feels similar. There’s a deep, profound fed-upness being expressed in the voting so far. As others have said, I’m also feeling queasily optimistic.
please forgive my naivete, but I'd love to hear more about what you see as the issues with the New York Times. They have been a primary info source for me for election coverage, and it feels that they've spent so much time talking to election deniers, pro life nuts, etc. The coverage has made me feel crazy (and of course "crazy) doesn't begin to cover this moment in general), but I'd appreciate your insight as to the flaws in the reporting I've been consuming. Thank you.
Fuck.
Where would you move? What’s on your shortlist? I don’t see many good options either. US is still the overall best I think despite our issues.
Also, with the ai robots coming, we won’t need the immigrants for labor, only for more consumers and to prevent population collapse.
If the AIs are doing the jobs though, where does any consumer get the money to consume with? People like Musk say they want UBI but that would be useless without other measures like rent caps, because if everyone gets an extra $1k per month, you can guarantee rents are going up by $1k pm. And EM and the like sure as hell won't be in favour of 'socialist' things like rent caps.
Personally I think the AI robot thing is a bit hyped, sure they can do things like checking out groceries or giving you fast food but full self-driving is a long way off (despite the claims) for example. I predict there will be a lot of layoffs when companies try to switch too early to AI and then a lot of re-hires when they find it doesn't work as advertised. Eventually, yes, it is a problem we need to solve though.
And as to UBI— I find the “Poverty Equilibrium” argument to be a very compelling reason why UBI won’t fully work, though it could be good occasionally just for moral, but I think even with the robots people will be fine. The majority of people find ways to thrive. Only a very small percentage are homeless and most of that is due to medical problems and not “the system.” At least not in the US.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but that’s what I observe.
No, I mean the ai ROBOTS. Like Optimus will be able to paint your house and pour concrete. Amazon trucks will drive themselves. Optimus can clean. Etc
I have self driving on the Tesla my partner and I share now and it works very well. Scary well. But I hardly ever use it, because it’s too law-abiding 😂 and no one really drives that conservatively where I live. Everyone drives aggressively and well over the speed limit.
I have full confidence that unless the government intercedes or he’s killed, Musk will create Optimus, because Teslas already work so well. Grok also is pretty good. He’s halfway there.
yeah I agree, in 20 years' time, sure, but for example at the recent Tesla event, the 'robots' were being remote controlled by humans and the humans were talking through a speaker in the robot body. the Boston Dynamics ones are much better, but still not ready to replace most human workers any time soon. But yes, they will get there, because the potential for profit is so massive
And it’s what humans want. And we always keep striving for what we want until we get it.
well, we want the convenience, but we also don’t want to be left with no means of paying for basic utilities and food, which is what would happen if it were suddenly possible to replace most workers with robots tomorrow. But overall, I agree with you that we will work it out, because it’s not going to happen tomorrow and we have time to design a system which works for most people, at least (although it may be fewer people than the current system works for)
Robots will also generate more growth and wealth, because people will be able to have new businesses using the robots. Likely entrepreneurial people able to access finance will thrive with the robots, but those who can’t access banking, like illegal immigrants, will be really screwed.
I mean actually full self-driving with zero interference from a human, not even having one in the car. From what I hear that is still not achieved, a human must be there, and paying attention, in case something unforeseen happens.
Aren’t the Waymos already fully driving without humans in them? They have them in CA and TX.
yes you’re right, I was thinking of the Tesla ones. But each one costs around 250k apparently, so unless they can get the price way down they may not be around for much longer in that format
Though for a company, 250k is maybe cheaper and more reliable than a human delivery driver employee if the car lasts a few years.
Robots in all caps meaning when we really perfect them. Maybe it’s 10 years away or 20, but I think it’s inevitable. Also some promise with the brain organoids.
People are just not taking this seriously and they just don’t understand what’s at stake and they don’t want to know or be bothered or blamed. Or take any responsibility.
Missouri polling Bonespur by 10, and Hawley tracking about the same against the challenger. Bummer.
Hmmm on the one side you have the belief that everything is a social construct. On the other side, that meaning comes from God. Philosophically, nominalism vs. realism, respectively. I don't think the left can really unmoor themselves from the secular materialist worldview, which may be the biggest problem of all, i.e. the meaning vacuum you mention. How do we expect to reckon with this?
Also I get that you're saying Trump=evil but by putting "win" when talking about Trump winning are you saying any result that has Trump winning is somehow not valid? That seems to be what you are saying Trump is doing to any Harris wins result.
why can't the left move away from materialism? Marx was in favour of atheism but that part is not essential IMO. Ivan Illich is a good example of a non-materialist leftist (and other pastors from the Americas with similar views)
Well I think it was pretty essential to Marx. While Illich may have been a leftist, it would hardly overlay on top of what we in america today call leftist, as he was a traditionalist and I'm sure would not take to what the left are doing socially these days. The social constructionist types are necessarily opposed to God.
We’re willing to throw it all away in exchange for obscene amounts of ad revenue. But for a brief shining period of time we created immense shareholder value. A notable, if not laudable, achievement.
I’m tracking Iowa in some detail and combing through comment sections and running across quite a few people who say they are old republican women living in Iowa and they were around during the Roe decision and they are mightily pissed about Dobbs. They say they just voted blue for the first time in their lives.
“Rattner writes: “With unemployment having been at or below 4.1 percent for 30 months, we have a shortage of workers, not an excess.”
I’ve never bought this argument. We do have a “shortage” of workers but the unemployment numbers only reflect people who are have been actively looking for jobs in the last 6 months. Our employment numbers are low because there are a lot of people who learned to live cheaply or are on benefits post covid and not looking for work. This drove up wages but at a huge cost of increased spending on benefits, which is just one of the reasons we have skyrocketing debt. If true this would greatly favor the “harsh” policies Musk is suggesting.
If you didn’t see, Musk is openly saying they plan to crash the stock market and the value of the US dollar.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kaboom-elon-musk-predicts-hardship-economic-turmoil-and-a-stock-market-crash-if-trump-wins-20483008
I’ve tried to think of what this would mean if they win. I have no expertise in guessing here and have gotten mixed opinions from those in finance but my immediate thought is that if you openly tell people that you plan to crash the dollar and the stock market then to me, if I was a person with money, I would immediately pull my funds out of the US stock market if Trump wins. This is also a signal to China and Russia to collectively pull funds out of the US stock market potentially causing an immediate crash that can then be blamed on the outgoing Biden administration/ Harris administration.
Please tell me I’m wrong / I hope the Iowa poll is right