I just read somewhere: "Correlation does not imply causation".
Correlation does, in fact, imply causation. It doesn't, however, *prove* causation. If you find a correlation, then you start digging there to find out if there's a causal link.
If correlation did not imply causation, we wouldn't look for correlations since they wouldn't imply that there might be a causal link to look at.
Correlation does, in fact, imply causation. It doesn't, however, *prove* causation. If you find a correlation, then you start digging there to find out if there's a causal link.
If correlation did not imply causation, we wouldn't look for correlations since they wouldn't imply that there might be a causal link to look at.
There's a couple really interesting things about this I found. I have to apologize, these sources are clearly biased but they're still interesting.
This is an article talking about the nuclear family going back to the 1300s in England. This makes a lot of sense in some ways since England is an island nation that relied a lot on its navy. This actually jives with history that isn't particularly partisan today, that following the black death, lords were having to deal with people migrating from territory to territory since the value of an individual would have risen in that time. Part of the reason for the peasant revolts of the 1300s-1500s is that lords were trying to keep their peasants from migrating using tyrannical means and the peasants wanted to leave. This matches more with the nuclear family structure where individuals go where the opportunity is instead of a clan or extended family structure that would much more leave you tied to a certain geographical region unless you could convince your entire clan to pack up and leave.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-real-roots-of-the-nuclear-family/
Secondly, here's a video from whatifalthist that examines family structures as a driving force throughout history. The interesting thing is realizing how many family structures there are in the world today, and whether you agree with all his conclusions it's nonetheless thought provoking and some of the statements he says about family structures and the societies that form around those family structures are incontrovertable (of course there's that pesky causality problem again, not gonna pretend)
https://youtu.be/-RFFwhbVqeU
I'm a member of a nuclear family society, and I'm afraid that the first article has me dead to rights. My life's meaning and work is my son, and we did wait until I was 'worthy' of having a family to have kids, and I wrote a damn book for the little guy showing I care deeply about his education under the assumption that someday he will have to go off and do the same. The nuclear family is implicit in my suggestion that Grayson be prepared for his "walz", or his journey to learn his craft. The existential and individualistic tone of my book and telling him to find his own way is all part of that too. In one of the clan or extended family based societies, it's likely that I'd be readying him to conform to the family's expectations instead.
The other thing is "be careful what you wish for", since it really does seem that if you switch out family structures, you also switch out basic cultural assumptions, and that's going to lead to fundamentally different societies that you might not actually want. The Nuclear family society is the most open to strangers, the most free, and it isn't an accident that successful feminism came from nuclear family societies. It seems like many other forms of society are more likely to be less free, much less equal, less prosperous, less agile, and often deeply socially conservative. I think we need to be careful when assuming that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the nuclear family structure inherently is likely to result in better outcomes for kids, because of the following narrative:
1. Fathers must be "worthy" of having a family and need to become someone a woman can fall in love with, you won't get married solely by virtue of your mother or father or aunt or uncle picking a spouse for you, and they need to individually achieve that worthiness, since they won't have the value of their clan behind them. Compare with many clan structures where your mate is chosen for you by the family.
2. The fathers who have more material resources because they have become worthy, are older and wiser, and selected for success. The women who fall in love with them select them in part because they have virtues that will help them survive as a unit, and women take more time choosing than if they were just forced into a marriage. In some clan based societies, women are married off before they've even hit puberty. Compare to a clan structure where the elders likely have the most control over resources.
3. Because both parents are older, there are fewer kids, and smaller families do mean that there are more resources to dedicate to each child compared to other family structures.
4. The kids are born, with both parents knowing that in 20 years the child will have to prove themselves worthy if they are a boy, or find and attract a worthy boy if they are a girl, and so the parents focus on raising a child who is as good as possible to help sustain the bloodline by producing meritorious heirs who will go out and find independent success. Contrast this with clan structures where fitting into the clan or extended family is likely to be the top concern.
It really becomes clear why nuclear family societies outcompeted clan societies in a short period of time, going from clan structures being the most dominant society type on earth to nuclear family societies covering much of the globe.
In spite of that, I think it's safe to say that the nuclear family is a two sided sword, on one side it's a highly meritocratic system that results in better outcomes and people competitively working to become virtuous enough to succeed. on the other hand, it's destabilizing, and it's contrary to fundamental human nature in many ways.
I don't think I can imagine a good society centered around single parenthood. The data from India and sub-saharan Africa both show that kids are more likely to face big problems including infant mortality when they are in a single parent family, and both india and sub saharan africa are not nuclear families. It's a "law of physics" problem where it's always going to be harder alone.
I was also just thinking that the whole concept of single parenthood is predicated on cultural assumptions that arise from the liberal societies arising in part from the nuclear family. In many societies, if your clan picks who your spouse is, that's your spouse. You don't get an option to be a single parent because the same group that will support you will also not allow you to leave that spouse. In some more clan based societies, you may be killed for indulging in sex outside of your arranged marriage (not all, admittedly, but it's quite common)
This is an article talking about the nuclear family going back to the 1300s in England. This makes a lot of sense in some ways since England is an island nation that relied a lot on its navy. This actually jives with history that isn't particularly partisan today, that following the black death, lords were having to deal with people migrating from territory to territory since the value of an individual would have risen in that time. Part of the reason for the peasant revolts of the 1300s-1500s is that lords were trying to keep their peasants from migrating using tyrannical means and the peasants wanted to leave. This matches more with the nuclear family structure where individuals go where the opportunity is instead of a clan or extended family structure that would much more leave you tied to a certain geographical region unless you could convince your entire clan to pack up and leave.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-real-roots-of-the-nuclear-family/
Secondly, here's a video from whatifalthist that examines family structures as a driving force throughout history. The interesting thing is realizing how many family structures there are in the world today, and whether you agree with all his conclusions it's nonetheless thought provoking and some of the statements he says about family structures and the societies that form around those family structures are incontrovertable (of course there's that pesky causality problem again, not gonna pretend)
https://youtu.be/-RFFwhbVqeU
I'm a member of a nuclear family society, and I'm afraid that the first article has me dead to rights. My life's meaning and work is my son, and we did wait until I was 'worthy' of having a family to have kids, and I wrote a damn book for the little guy showing I care deeply about his education under the assumption that someday he will have to go off and do the same. The nuclear family is implicit in my suggestion that Grayson be prepared for his "walz", or his journey to learn his craft. The existential and individualistic tone of my book and telling him to find his own way is all part of that too. In one of the clan or extended family based societies, it's likely that I'd be readying him to conform to the family's expectations instead.
The other thing is "be careful what you wish for", since it really does seem that if you switch out family structures, you also switch out basic cultural assumptions, and that's going to lead to fundamentally different societies that you might not actually want. The Nuclear family society is the most open to strangers, the most free, and it isn't an accident that successful feminism came from nuclear family societies. It seems like many other forms of society are more likely to be less free, much less equal, less prosperous, less agile, and often deeply socially conservative. I think we need to be careful when assuming that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the nuclear family structure inherently is likely to result in better outcomes for kids, because of the following narrative:
1. Fathers must be "worthy" of having a family and need to become someone a woman can fall in love with, you won't get married solely by virtue of your mother or father or aunt or uncle picking a spouse for you, and they need to individually achieve that worthiness, since they won't have the value of their clan behind them. Compare with many clan structures where your mate is chosen for you by the family.
2. The fathers who have more material resources because they have become worthy, are older and wiser, and selected for success. The women who fall in love with them select them in part because they have virtues that will help them survive as a unit, and women take more time choosing than if they were just forced into a marriage. In some clan based societies, women are married off before they've even hit puberty. Compare to a clan structure where the elders likely have the most control over resources.
3. Because both parents are older, there are fewer kids, and smaller families do mean that there are more resources to dedicate to each child compared to other family structures.
4. The kids are born, with both parents knowing that in 20 years the child will have to prove themselves worthy if they are a boy, or find and attract a worthy boy if they are a girl, and so the parents focus on raising a child who is as good as possible to help sustain the bloodline by producing meritorious heirs who will go out and find independent success. Contrast this with clan structures where fitting into the clan or extended family is likely to be the top concern.
It really becomes clear why nuclear family societies outcompeted clan societies in a short period of time, going from clan structures being the most dominant society type on earth to nuclear family societies covering much of the globe.
In spite of that, I think it's safe to say that the nuclear family is a two sided sword, on one side it's a highly meritocratic system that results in better outcomes and people competitively working to become virtuous enough to succeed. on the other hand, it's destabilizing, and it's contrary to fundamental human nature in many ways.
I don't think I can imagine a good society centered around single parenthood. The data from India and sub-saharan Africa both show that kids are more likely to face big problems including infant mortality when they are in a single parent family, and both india and sub saharan africa are not nuclear families. It's a "law of physics" problem where it's always going to be harder alone.
I was also just thinking that the whole concept of single parenthood is predicated on cultural assumptions that arise from the liberal societies arising in part from the nuclear family. In many societies, if your clan picks who your spouse is, that's your spouse. You don't get an option to be a single parent because the same group that will support you will also not allow you to leave that spouse. In some more clan based societies, you may be killed for indulging in sex outside of your arranged marriage (not all, admittedly, but it's quite common)
One big reason why I want to really go full Asian dad -- basically making sure he's prepared for what's coming.
People hate on the baby boomers for being the last generation right after the postwar boom, but every generation including them has had serious challenges. The boomers often saw their comfy domestic union jobs disappear or become shadows of their former selves, gen x experienced a really bad recession early on in their lives, the millennials experienced the 2008 financial crisis and things haven't been nearly as good as the numbers suggest after that, Gen Z has never seen good times in their adult lives, and Gen Alpha is being born during an era of tent cities and mass deaths of despair. The fact that we did have some outliers like the tech industry and the oil industry for a while doesn't change the overall picture.
So it hasn't really been getting better except in little zones. With millennials and gen z having way fewer kids, however, the population is set to crash, and when that sort of thing happens usually the lot of the common man changes and the secular cycle begins a new golden age. The millennials will largely miss it entirely I expect, Gen Z will start to see it (hopefully), and with luck Gen Alpha will really get to experience a general upswing in quality of life. At the moment Africa is looking like it's having a bit of a baby boom, but Peter Zeihan has suggested that's in large part due to the mass investment of the baby boomers with their retirement funds, so it isn't something that's going to keep happening as they burn through their retirements and such, instead that money is going to be repatriated to buy exlax and dog food.
So it hasn't really been getting better except in little zones. With millennials and gen z having way fewer kids, however, the population is set to crash, and when that sort of thing happens usually the lot of the common man changes and the secular cycle begins a new golden age. The millennials will largely miss it entirely I expect, Gen Z will start to see it (hopefully), and with luck Gen Alpha will really get to experience a general upswing in quality of life. At the moment Africa is looking like it's having a bit of a baby boom, but Peter Zeihan has suggested that's in large part due to the mass investment of the baby boomers with their retirement funds, so it isn't something that's going to keep happening as they burn through their retirements and such, instead that money is going to be repatriated to buy exlax and dog food.
It's one of those things that vacillates between extremes.
Right now we're in a secret great depression (secret only because nobody in government wants to admit the truth, it's fully obvious to anyone with eyes who doesn't have their butler do their shopping for them), so there's not enough jobs anyway so why not hire someone with a bunch of extra qualifications? Hell, ask for a 4-year degree to stock shelves at Walmart, it isn't like there isn't a massive supply of people.
If things turned around (probably looking at a decade or two at least, and they'd need to accept the actual state of the world for that to happen), then eventually it's like "Do you wander the streets of downtown wearing nothing but used newspaper and are on the offender registry for urinating in a kids playground while making deliberate unblinking eye contact with the children? We want to make you our new CEO!"
The good thing is that in the second phases sometimes you find people who really are talented, but other times you actually can judge a book by its cover.
Right now we're in a secret great depression (secret only because nobody in government wants to admit the truth, it's fully obvious to anyone with eyes who doesn't have their butler do their shopping for them), so there's not enough jobs anyway so why not hire someone with a bunch of extra qualifications? Hell, ask for a 4-year degree to stock shelves at Walmart, it isn't like there isn't a massive supply of people.
If things turned around (probably looking at a decade or two at least, and they'd need to accept the actual state of the world for that to happen), then eventually it's like "Do you wander the streets of downtown wearing nothing but used newspaper and are on the offender registry for urinating in a kids playground while making deliberate unblinking eye contact with the children? We want to make you our new CEO!"
The good thing is that in the second phases sometimes you find people who really are talented, but other times you actually can judge a book by its cover.
"no it's ok this time, i had my cousin vito look at em he's so smart he invested in a bitcoin once. I gay ran tee."
Economic factors do make up a large difference, but 2 biological parent families vs. 1 biological parent 1 step parent families show marked differences as well, suggesting that the economic stress is only one part of the puzzle. https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/73/1/221/2233111
There are studies about other cultures, but I couldn't find any comparing cultures.
https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol18/13/18-13.pdf [Korea] the study found that children were less likely to want to attend university.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1145 [Sub Saharan Africa] the study found children much less likely to live to 5.
These articles suggest that at least korean and sub saharan african cultures both show negative effects from being raised by a single parent.
It looks like there's considerable literature suggesting that an extended family such as grandparents being in the picture has a powerful impact on children's outcomes, but surprisingly this study found it depends on race. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4622450
I tried to find more information about how many grandparents are involved in single parent household childrearing vs. 2-parent households but failed. On one hand being a single parent can create a need that a grandparent can fill. On the other hand, divorces and break-ups do damage extended family relations.
I was interested in the studies on violent crime, but I couldn't find any studies on indian, chinese, and african civilizations and violent crime compared to western civilization.
One thing that reviewing the literature started to make clear to me is that you can correct for all the things being a single parent cause, but while that makes for a good experimental model, it's I think missing the forest for the trees because there are potential causal relationships here... maybe? Married couples definitely make more money by far than single parent households and the data there is overwhelming, but could that just be because the sort of people who are making more money or likely to make more money are more likely to get married? At the same time, extended families tend to get involved more in single parent households, but the process of divorce or break-ups can actually damage extended family relations as well, having a causal impact on that.
Another thing is something one paper I read suggested, that there's a sort of dual economics going on, where single parents have to choose between money or paying attention to their kids. It seems that single mothers tend to focus on the latter, single fathers the former. Both deficits seem to have a negative impact, suggesting that my original point that two parent households are beneficial is going to generally be true for the same reason, that kids and mothers need help to be doing their best (and so do fathers it seems -- it's not easy for anyone to go it alone).
On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of literature suggesting that there are factors other than simply future earning potential that determine who gets married and who stays married. Religious people were overwhelmingly more likely to get married than atheists https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/03/19/share-of-married-adults-varies-widely-across-u-s-religious-groups/ (68% for the top religious group vs. 30% for atheists)
As well, religious women are slightly more likely to stay married than atheist ones. https://www.aei.org/articles/the-religious-marriage-paradox-younger-marriage-less-divorce/ " Overall, if we control for basic socioeconomic background and a woman’s educational career trajectory, the typical marriage of a woman with a religious upbringing is about 10% less likely to end in divorce within the first 15 years of marriage than the typical marriage of a woman with a non-religious upbringing."
The next question would have to then be "do people get more religious as they get wealthier?", but according to one theory called Secularization, they in fact become less religious. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3511041
This all seems to suggest that religiosity is a relatively independent variable that would have a causal impact on more kids growing up with 2 parent households for reasons not related to economics or other materialist factors.
Another factor there that could skew the whole data set is that relgious people are going to be indoctrinated into ideologies whose memetic value may be that they provided a survival advantage over people who didn't have those ideologies, such as prosocial guilt-based worldviews that make people try to be trustworthy to be worthy in the eyes of God, so that would end up affecting outcomes of parents and children.
I think it's easy to forget in all the facts and figures and logic that reality is reality and whatever the reason at the end of the day most kids in 2-parent households simply do astoundingly better than most kids in single parent households. We can discuss the reasons why but it's important not to bury the lede or sand down the facts by analysis so deep we forget what the facts are.
There are studies about other cultures, but I couldn't find any comparing cultures.
https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol18/13/18-13.pdf [Korea] the study found that children were less likely to want to attend university.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1145 [Sub Saharan Africa] the study found children much less likely to live to 5.
These articles suggest that at least korean and sub saharan african cultures both show negative effects from being raised by a single parent.
It looks like there's considerable literature suggesting that an extended family such as grandparents being in the picture has a powerful impact on children's outcomes, but surprisingly this study found it depends on race. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4622450
I tried to find more information about how many grandparents are involved in single parent household childrearing vs. 2-parent households but failed. On one hand being a single parent can create a need that a grandparent can fill. On the other hand, divorces and break-ups do damage extended family relations.
I was interested in the studies on violent crime, but I couldn't find any studies on indian, chinese, and african civilizations and violent crime compared to western civilization.
One thing that reviewing the literature started to make clear to me is that you can correct for all the things being a single parent cause, but while that makes for a good experimental model, it's I think missing the forest for the trees because there are potential causal relationships here... maybe? Married couples definitely make more money by far than single parent households and the data there is overwhelming, but could that just be because the sort of people who are making more money or likely to make more money are more likely to get married? At the same time, extended families tend to get involved more in single parent households, but the process of divorce or break-ups can actually damage extended family relations as well, having a causal impact on that.
Another thing is something one paper I read suggested, that there's a sort of dual economics going on, where single parents have to choose between money or paying attention to their kids. It seems that single mothers tend to focus on the latter, single fathers the former. Both deficits seem to have a negative impact, suggesting that my original point that two parent households are beneficial is going to generally be true for the same reason, that kids and mothers need help to be doing their best (and so do fathers it seems -- it's not easy for anyone to go it alone).
On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of literature suggesting that there are factors other than simply future earning potential that determine who gets married and who stays married. Religious people were overwhelmingly more likely to get married than atheists https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/03/19/share-of-married-adults-varies-widely-across-u-s-religious-groups/ (68% for the top religious group vs. 30% for atheists)
As well, religious women are slightly more likely to stay married than atheist ones. https://www.aei.org/articles/the-religious-marriage-paradox-younger-marriage-less-divorce/ " Overall, if we control for basic socioeconomic background and a woman’s educational career trajectory, the typical marriage of a woman with a religious upbringing is about 10% less likely to end in divorce within the first 15 years of marriage than the typical marriage of a woman with a non-religious upbringing."
The next question would have to then be "do people get more religious as they get wealthier?", but according to one theory called Secularization, they in fact become less religious. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3511041
This all seems to suggest that religiosity is a relatively independent variable that would have a causal impact on more kids growing up with 2 parent households for reasons not related to economics or other materialist factors.
Another factor there that could skew the whole data set is that relgious people are going to be indoctrinated into ideologies whose memetic value may be that they provided a survival advantage over people who didn't have those ideologies, such as prosocial guilt-based worldviews that make people try to be trustworthy to be worthy in the eyes of God, so that would end up affecting outcomes of parents and children.
I think it's easy to forget in all the facts and figures and logic that reality is reality and whatever the reason at the end of the day most kids in 2-parent households simply do astoundingly better than most kids in single parent households. We can discuss the reasons why but it's important not to bury the lede or sand down the facts by analysis so deep we forget what the facts are.
If it was you who was accused of something and a jury did find you civilly liable for requiring just 51% preponderance of the evidence, would you say it's wrong to continue to maintain your innocence?
I'm not talking about Trump. I'm asking what the consequences of this standard are for someone who isn't Trump. What about someone who was found liable but didn't actually do the thing? Should they be forced to tell everyone the court approved version of the story?
If that's the standard for civil cases, what about criminal cases? Should we make it illegal to maintain your innocence after you've been convicted of a crime? After all, we decided to a much higher standard that such a person definitely did it.
Tread carefully because the same standard will cut both ways..
Now I'd you just mean that he's a dishonest jerk, obviously. I mean, he can't even deny all the way before he starts veering off course because he needs to talk about how great he is lol.
I'm not talking about Trump. I'm asking what the consequences of this standard are for someone who isn't Trump. What about someone who was found liable but didn't actually do the thing? Should they be forced to tell everyone the court approved version of the story?
If that's the standard for civil cases, what about criminal cases? Should we make it illegal to maintain your innocence after you've been convicted of a crime? After all, we decided to a much higher standard that such a person definitely did it.
Tread carefully because the same standard will cut both ways..
Now I'd you just mean that he's a dishonest jerk, obviously. I mean, he can't even deny all the way before he starts veering off course because he needs to talk about how great he is lol.
Yesterday's conversations with everyone were awesome, having real in-depth conversations about all kinds of topics with different people is exactly what I want out of the fediverse.
I appreciate the heck out of everyone.
I appreciate the heck out of everyone.
I've found reconstructions such as the attached, and while it's far from modern, it's significantly more complex and sophisticated than Gregorian chanting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWZ6WMw4aas
here's a blog post about Greek music:
https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/a-100-accurate-reconstruction-of-ancient-greek-music
As I recall, a number of Greek philosophers knew about harmony and wrote about it and even metaphorically integrated the concept into other areas of thinking including Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. It stands to reason that their music would integrate it as well. Pythagoras not only noticed that harmony sounded nice, but tried to understand the concept mathematically as well (at least according to legend)
Once the period dominated by Gregorian chants ended (which was a stylistic choice since the point was to focus on the message of piety rather than the complexity of the music), multi-voice choir music immediately started using harmony again (assuming the previous roman and greek music used it, which I do believe it did, at least based on writings and reconstructions)
Eventually multi-voice choir music was supplemented with instrumentals, and while the structure is considerably simpler than later works it's still much more complex than the original Gregorian chants.
As I mentioned before though, this appearance of progression after a period of major decline may be a consequence of who was writing things down at the time, and there may have been much more complex music immediately following the fall of the roman empire and nobody had thought to write it down in part thanks to a drop in literacy that follows the collapses of an empire like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWZ6WMw4aas
here's a blog post about Greek music:
https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/a-100-accurate-reconstruction-of-ancient-greek-music
As I recall, a number of Greek philosophers knew about harmony and wrote about it and even metaphorically integrated the concept into other areas of thinking including Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. It stands to reason that their music would integrate it as well. Pythagoras not only noticed that harmony sounded nice, but tried to understand the concept mathematically as well (at least according to legend)
Once the period dominated by Gregorian chants ended (which was a stylistic choice since the point was to focus on the message of piety rather than the complexity of the music), multi-voice choir music immediately started using harmony again (assuming the previous roman and greek music used it, which I do believe it did, at least based on writings and reconstructions)
Eventually multi-voice choir music was supplemented with instrumentals, and while the structure is considerably simpler than later works it's still much more complex than the original Gregorian chants.
As I mentioned before though, this appearance of progression after a period of major decline may be a consequence of who was writing things down at the time, and there may have been much more complex music immediately following the fall of the roman empire and nobody had thought to write it down in part thanks to a drop in literacy that follows the collapses of an empire like that.
I thought it was interesting that after the fairly complex music of greece and the roman empire, the west's records of music seem to basically start with a single voice gregorian chanting and then build from there into more and more complex music, but I always have to remember "history is written by those who write history" so it's likely that folk music might tell a different story if we had a bunch of it. Regardless of whether the narrative is accurate, it's pretty incredible.
What you're talking about as the focus is something interesting in many different types of music. To a hardened western ear like mine, some stuff like Japanese court music almost doesn't sound like music as we'd consider it today but it's clear the musicians are highly practiced and skilled at their art. One of the reasons to be exposed to a lot of different music early so you have an ear for it.
What you're talking about as the focus is something interesting in many different types of music. To a hardened western ear like mine, some stuff like Japanese court music almost doesn't sound like music as we'd consider it today but it's clear the musicians are highly practiced and skilled at their art. One of the reasons to be exposed to a lot of different music early so you have an ear for it.
(last wall of text for tonight, I'm ruminating a lot today....)
No matter what, Trump is a short term thing. If he wins, he's only in for 4 years and then he's in the dustbin of history. If he loses, someone else is president for 4 years and he's gonna be in the dustbin of history.
The scary thing is that both camps are going to try to find another Trump for different reasons.
Trump was the ultimately successful solution in 2016 to the total meltdown of the Republican party in 2008. They tried a couple iterations of their previous formula which had been reasonably successful but got totally trounced by Obama (who really was more just right place right time in 2008 and didn't screw up), so Trump was something completely different and everyone thought he'd lose but instead he won. The machine that elected him rather existed before he came to power it's just the faces were a bit different, and will exist in some form or another until long after he and Biden are dead of old age and buried. I think there's reasons to be concerned that if Trump doesn't break the establishment this time (whether he wins or not) the GOP could go for someone even more abrasive who they think will break the establishment, but it could also be someone more moderate too, if they find someone with a silver tongue.
The thing that scares me is that the machine dead set on destroying Trump will still exist and the people in that machine will need to find someone new to destroy to justify their existence in positions of power.
These things never go away. Moveon is incredibly ironically named since it was created to tell congress to move on from President Clinton's sex scandals (yet it can't move on from existing since its cause is obsolete). Media Matters I think was created in light of the widespread fraud around the war in Iraq, it's still going today in a media landscape that really doesn't have that much conservative representation among the MSM.
In the same way, the political kill squads meant for Trump, I can't see why they would go away when they could be turned towards other opponents, which I can't see any reason why it wouldn't eventually just turn into tit for tat...
Many people think the Roman Republic died the day Julius Caesar was crowned dictator, but the events that really set the path for the republic were things like the first open assassination, and the first time a Roman general marched on Rome. These events cast the die from which the Republic would fall and 500 years of dictatorships (and a carousel of murdered emperors) would come about.
One thing I note is that once he's not on twitter, Trump isn't really that much of an extremist (an extremist would have broken out the lead bullets during the summer of love, for example. It would have potentially broken a bunch of rules and he might have had to answer for it later, but the office of the president has deployed troops on american soil in the past, such as when Eisenhower used the troops to enforce desegregation), just intended to break the establishment and is a massive jerk. One thing I see is that he might not be extremist, but a lot of young people are becoming more extremist because the current answers aren't working for them. Families have gone from a nuclear family to multiple generations in one home not because it's they want to but because kids can't get good enough jobs to afford a home. Some anthropologists posit that family structure dictates the form a government takes. If we go from a nuclear family to a family where the father (or father and mother) have disproportionate power in the home as the homeowner then that may in fact predict a turn towards a non-democratic government such as we see in patriarchic societies such as china and the middle east.
The change won't happen anytime soon, Trump won't be getting any kind of chance to become a dictator even if he wanted to, but in a couple generations you could have a real problem on your hands, and in other regions of the world that share such a family structure this tends to be bad for women too.
No matter what, Trump is a short term thing. If he wins, he's only in for 4 years and then he's in the dustbin of history. If he loses, someone else is president for 4 years and he's gonna be in the dustbin of history.
The scary thing is that both camps are going to try to find another Trump for different reasons.
Trump was the ultimately successful solution in 2016 to the total meltdown of the Republican party in 2008. They tried a couple iterations of their previous formula which had been reasonably successful but got totally trounced by Obama (who really was more just right place right time in 2008 and didn't screw up), so Trump was something completely different and everyone thought he'd lose but instead he won. The machine that elected him rather existed before he came to power it's just the faces were a bit different, and will exist in some form or another until long after he and Biden are dead of old age and buried. I think there's reasons to be concerned that if Trump doesn't break the establishment this time (whether he wins or not) the GOP could go for someone even more abrasive who they think will break the establishment, but it could also be someone more moderate too, if they find someone with a silver tongue.
The thing that scares me is that the machine dead set on destroying Trump will still exist and the people in that machine will need to find someone new to destroy to justify their existence in positions of power.
These things never go away. Moveon is incredibly ironically named since it was created to tell congress to move on from President Clinton's sex scandals (yet it can't move on from existing since its cause is obsolete). Media Matters I think was created in light of the widespread fraud around the war in Iraq, it's still going today in a media landscape that really doesn't have that much conservative representation among the MSM.
In the same way, the political kill squads meant for Trump, I can't see why they would go away when they could be turned towards other opponents, which I can't see any reason why it wouldn't eventually just turn into tit for tat...
Many people think the Roman Republic died the day Julius Caesar was crowned dictator, but the events that really set the path for the republic were things like the first open assassination, and the first time a Roman general marched on Rome. These events cast the die from which the Republic would fall and 500 years of dictatorships (and a carousel of murdered emperors) would come about.
One thing I note is that once he's not on twitter, Trump isn't really that much of an extremist (an extremist would have broken out the lead bullets during the summer of love, for example. It would have potentially broken a bunch of rules and he might have had to answer for it later, but the office of the president has deployed troops on american soil in the past, such as when Eisenhower used the troops to enforce desegregation), just intended to break the establishment and is a massive jerk. One thing I see is that he might not be extremist, but a lot of young people are becoming more extremist because the current answers aren't working for them. Families have gone from a nuclear family to multiple generations in one home not because it's they want to but because kids can't get good enough jobs to afford a home. Some anthropologists posit that family structure dictates the form a government takes. If we go from a nuclear family to a family where the father (or father and mother) have disproportionate power in the home as the homeowner then that may in fact predict a turn towards a non-democratic government such as we see in patriarchic societies such as china and the middle east.
The change won't happen anytime soon, Trump won't be getting any kind of chance to become a dictator even if he wanted to, but in a couple generations you could have a real problem on your hands, and in other regions of the world that share such a family structure this tends to be bad for women too.
(Sorry, wall of texting everyone tonight...)
I saw a really interesting video a while back that suggested that there were 2 eras for homonid reproduction.
From 800,000 years ago to about 250,000 years ago, the best reproductive strategy for men was to have many partners and not worry about what happened since it'd likely turn out mostly fine since women could carry babies to term the same as other animals.
After 250,000 years ago, the human cranium became so huge that it started to endanger the women, and so first the women were more incapacitated when pregnant, and second the child was born much more prematurely compared to other animals. At that point, the best reproductive strategy for men was to have one (or a small number at least) of partners and be active in the child's development so the woman or women would be supported and the children would have additional support during the extra additional time they're helpless compared to other animals.
The discussion was about men at the time, but I think you can infer that survival strategies for women might be quite different as well under both scenarios.
In this sense, it makes sense that there are different strategies built into us and that they seem to be battling it out within an individual at times, and that for some people one strategy might express itself more than the other (or others -- there could be other strategies not contained in this model)
An interesting side effect of all of it is that it seems like there's something in children where they develop with an innate understanding of whether they are growing up in a stable family or not, and their life strategies actually fundamentally change as a result. Both boys and girls grow up with markedly more risk prone lifestyles. I don't know if it's psychological, physiological, or epigenetic, but it suggests just how profound the different reproductive strategy is on survival, that we've got mechanisms for different types of behaviors built in depending on the status of our family.
I have seen studies on the topic regarding children growing up, and the data is so compelling I don't know how it isn't on the front of every newspaper. The difference between a child with 2 parents and a child with 1 is astronomical.
I suspect that the reason it isn't heavily promoted is that it's contrary to the postmodern conception of life. We are not a tabula rasa, we are human beings ingrained with certain behaviors and mechanisms that helped us survive as a race, which manifest in us differently from person to person as we are each individual holders of a flame of life going back to the first single celled organism and going forward until the last person in our bloodlines expire and our histories are different and our lives are different. Moreover, we are not clay that can be molded into whatever form the powers that be might wish, we have an inbuilt preference for things in a certain way or else we turn to violence and crime and risky behaviors.
I saw a really interesting video a while back that suggested that there were 2 eras for homonid reproduction.
From 800,000 years ago to about 250,000 years ago, the best reproductive strategy for men was to have many partners and not worry about what happened since it'd likely turn out mostly fine since women could carry babies to term the same as other animals.
After 250,000 years ago, the human cranium became so huge that it started to endanger the women, and so first the women were more incapacitated when pregnant, and second the child was born much more prematurely compared to other animals. At that point, the best reproductive strategy for men was to have one (or a small number at least) of partners and be active in the child's development so the woman or women would be supported and the children would have additional support during the extra additional time they're helpless compared to other animals.
The discussion was about men at the time, but I think you can infer that survival strategies for women might be quite different as well under both scenarios.
In this sense, it makes sense that there are different strategies built into us and that they seem to be battling it out within an individual at times, and that for some people one strategy might express itself more than the other (or others -- there could be other strategies not contained in this model)
An interesting side effect of all of it is that it seems like there's something in children where they develop with an innate understanding of whether they are growing up in a stable family or not, and their life strategies actually fundamentally change as a result. Both boys and girls grow up with markedly more risk prone lifestyles. I don't know if it's psychological, physiological, or epigenetic, but it suggests just how profound the different reproductive strategy is on survival, that we've got mechanisms for different types of behaviors built in depending on the status of our family.
I have seen studies on the topic regarding children growing up, and the data is so compelling I don't know how it isn't on the front of every newspaper. The difference between a child with 2 parents and a child with 1 is astronomical.
I suspect that the reason it isn't heavily promoted is that it's contrary to the postmodern conception of life. We are not a tabula rasa, we are human beings ingrained with certain behaviors and mechanisms that helped us survive as a race, which manifest in us differently from person to person as we are each individual holders of a flame of life going back to the first single celled organism and going forward until the last person in our bloodlines expire and our histories are different and our lives are different. Moreover, we are not clay that can be molded into whatever form the powers that be might wish, we have an inbuilt preference for things in a certain way or else we turn to violence and crime and risky behaviors.
He's 2. He really likes music with a strong beat, so on one hand big band music but on the other indigenous music like powwow music.
(sorry, now I'm just geeking out about being a dad for a moment)
There's a neat pair of books called "The Male Brain" and "The Female Brain" that goes though neurological development from inside the womb until somewhat after puberty, and they really opened my eyes to the fact that the brain is a self-wiring device that relies on stimulus to figure out the parts of itself that will be important, and the earlier the stimulus the more the effects because the brain is slowly letting the parts of it.
I started counting to him and singing the alphabet on the day he was born, and as I watched him over the time I took off for pat leave (a few months) I'd try to pick out all kinds of different music, starting with different playlists of current music, then moving into stuff that's not so modern including many different types of classical music from around the world or ancient music. Not going to lie, I didn't like all of it, but the point isn't to make him me, it's to expose him to lots of stuff so he's been acclimated and exposed to many things. I think the 2 forms of indian classical music are somewhat of an acquired taste, but whenever I listen to them it reminds me of the silverchair song petrol and chlorine which is one of my favorite songs from them.
There's also some music from african tribes that was interesting in how much it reminded me of early american rock and roll.
(sorry, now I'm just geeking out about being a dad for a moment)
There's a neat pair of books called "The Male Brain" and "The Female Brain" that goes though neurological development from inside the womb until somewhat after puberty, and they really opened my eyes to the fact that the brain is a self-wiring device that relies on stimulus to figure out the parts of itself that will be important, and the earlier the stimulus the more the effects because the brain is slowly letting the parts of it.
I started counting to him and singing the alphabet on the day he was born, and as I watched him over the time I took off for pat leave (a few months) I'd try to pick out all kinds of different music, starting with different playlists of current music, then moving into stuff that's not so modern including many different types of classical music from around the world or ancient music. Not going to lie, I didn't like all of it, but the point isn't to make him me, it's to expose him to lots of stuff so he's been acclimated and exposed to many things. I think the 2 forms of indian classical music are somewhat of an acquired taste, but whenever I listen to them it reminds me of the silverchair song petrol and chlorine which is one of my favorite songs from them.
There's also some music from african tribes that was interesting in how much it reminded me of early american rock and roll.
In another thread, I'm writing now about how really no matter what Trump is a short-term thing. If he wins, it's 4 years and he's in the dustbin of history. If he loses, it's 4 years of someone else and he's still likely in the dustbin of history because he's not getting any younger.
Trump was the GOP's successful solution to the 2008 collapse of the party in 2016. Thing is, at the executive level they're going to need to go through that process again once they can't just vote for Trump.
I'm concerned that it could be someone way more extreme than Trump since he was elected to break the establishment and he didn't, but as long as he doesn't screw anything up (which isn't a given -- it's really hard to stay active without putting your foot in your mouth hard over years and years) he could be the guy instead. But you might have said the same about DeSantis until he showed he's just a freight train that happened to land on the right track but is going to barrel his way right off the bridge.
Trump was the GOP's successful solution to the 2008 collapse of the party in 2016. Thing is, at the executive level they're going to need to go through that process again once they can't just vote for Trump.
I'm concerned that it could be someone way more extreme than Trump since he was elected to break the establishment and he didn't, but as long as he doesn't screw anything up (which isn't a given -- it's really hard to stay active without putting your foot in your mouth hard over years and years) he could be the guy instead. But you might have said the same about DeSantis until he showed he's just a freight train that happened to land on the right track but is going to barrel his way right off the bridge.