I think the metaphor is typically not about being high power level or low power level per se, but the idea of hiding something big about yourself. I'd assume you could "hide your power level" and be a far left tankie just as much as a far right theocrat.
I could be mistaken, but I think it's also a phrase used by some in the LGBT community, showing how a metaphor can mean the same thing to far different groups.
I could be mistaken, but I think it's also a phrase used by some in the LGBT community, showing how a metaphor can mean the same thing to far different groups.
Minds is a great addition to the fediverse as well. In my view, it's win/win, opening up all kinds of different people.
Right now we are seeing a massive realignment of the voter basis of the two political parties in the United States, and I think part of the reason is that there is a deep racism in the ideas of the Democrats.
My interpretation is that black people aren't pro crime, they are anti getting railroaded for a bunch of shit they either didn't do or that they interpret as something that other people wouldn't have gotten charged for.
So right now you have a presidential candidate who is getting railroaded for a bunch of shit either didn't do or shit that most people wouldn't get charged for, and you have another presidential candidate who is trying to make it legal to destroy black communities. I think it really goes to show the disconnect, and in a lot of holes what we're seeing is a massive reduction in the number of confirmed black Biden voters, and a massive increase in the number of confirmed black Trump voters.
Leave it to the Republicans to screw something this obvious up, but at this moment, we are seeing the development of a brand new coalition on the right.
I read an article a couple days ago that talked about a politician in New York who was a more conservative Democrat who at first supported fdr, but then later on opposed him when he realized that he represented a much different direction for the Democrats than what he expected. The author of that article suggested that it represented a changing of the guard within the Democratic party, that is the politician was trying to retain a status quo that no longer existed. In the same way, there are plenty in the Republican party who are pushing against the formation of the new coalitions, but after the absolute collapse of the Republicans in 2008, they've been really fighting to find a story that makes people want to vote for them, and the story that built this new coalition seems to be the most compelling one of many competing ones in the post 2008 era.
My interpretation is that black people aren't pro crime, they are anti getting railroaded for a bunch of shit they either didn't do or that they interpret as something that other people wouldn't have gotten charged for.
So right now you have a presidential candidate who is getting railroaded for a bunch of shit either didn't do or shit that most people wouldn't get charged for, and you have another presidential candidate who is trying to make it legal to destroy black communities. I think it really goes to show the disconnect, and in a lot of holes what we're seeing is a massive reduction in the number of confirmed black Biden voters, and a massive increase in the number of confirmed black Trump voters.
Leave it to the Republicans to screw something this obvious up, but at this moment, we are seeing the development of a brand new coalition on the right.
I read an article a couple days ago that talked about a politician in New York who was a more conservative Democrat who at first supported fdr, but then later on opposed him when he realized that he represented a much different direction for the Democrats than what he expected. The author of that article suggested that it represented a changing of the guard within the Democratic party, that is the politician was trying to retain a status quo that no longer existed. In the same way, there are plenty in the Republican party who are pushing against the formation of the new coalitions, but after the absolute collapse of the Republicans in 2008, they've been really fighting to find a story that makes people want to vote for them, and the story that built this new coalition seems to be the most compelling one of many competing ones in the post 2008 era.
In previous posts, I've defined my understanding of the modern era as starting around the year 1500 with the enlightenment, and the postmodern era beginning shortly after world war II. The world wars were effectively the end of the modern period because after half a century of Western Civilization being vibrant, and going out and doing things, and feeling like they were justified in doing those things, the postmodern period represented the societal rejection of grand narratives, and even truth as something that can be objectively known. It's a fundamentally different era, and while the modern period did see an effective rejection of some ideas, it was a postmodern. That finally with the final nail in their coffins. When Nietzsche criticized Europe for killing god, it was a controversial statement because people still believed in God. However, a century later it was fairly uncontroversial and even celebrated.
Although world war II was the death rattle of the modernist period, the beginning of the end was world war i, since it was proof that the new liberal enlightened world order could still see the horrific situations as the battlefields of world war I. I guess it makes sense that a long and influential period which had reshaped the entire planet would take a little bit of time to fully die out. Art movements such as the dadaists are inherently postmodern and caused by a rejection of modernist values because they had led to such tragedy in Europe.
I guess it could be said that whereas world war II was the point that marked the departure between the modern era and the postmodern era for liberalism, in many parts of the world the publishing of the gulag archipelago was the point that marked the departure for marxists. Realizing that their ideology was not producing results that were morally Superior to liberals, it's similarly destroyed the grand narrative that was holding global Marxism together.
An important thing to have also be to define happiness. You could simply call happiness the raw emotional pleasure, but I think that that would be the wrong way to define it. The Nichomachean ethic introduced the idea of eudimonia as a counterpoint to raw hedonistic pleasure, has the pleasure from a life will lived and from actions well taken. From this point of view, if we are looking at the eudimonia definition of happiness it is self-evident that people are less happy because they are doing fewer things that lead to it.
I don't think you need to go into the pre-modern era to know people are happier in a non-postmodern context.
First of all, there are still modern civilizations on the planet. They are the civilizations which still rely heavily on modern or premodern values, such as religion, family, the nation and so on. A lot of Latin American countries are considerably more religious, but considerably more focus on family, and despite having markedly worse political and materialistic conditions compared to most postmodern civilizations, the people there are measurably happier.
Another example would be Southeast Asia, or even parts of Africa, both of which I've heard anecdotally are significantly happier than postmodern civilizations.
One fantastic example would be the same civilizations during the modern period compared to the post modern period. People in the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars we're willing to die on the battlefield for their values, and the civilizations were so vital that wars were happening relatively frequently has a release valve to get all of that vigor out somewhere. People are worried about world war 3, but my grandfather lied about his age in order to sign up for world war 2, today young people can't be hassled to even do the basic things of their own lives, they aren't having kids, they aren't participating in their communities, more able-bodied men are unemployed than most times through history, overall we're seeing entire civilizations commit suicide. The West is having its problems, but in China has similar issues despite being a quite different civilization. Xi jinping's call for a return to Maoism is a hope for a return to modernism, but it can't work -- you can stand in the same place in a stream, but the water has moved on and will never return.
Honestly, I think that we're already starting to see the postmodern worldview collapse because it doesn't really bring anything to the table other than nothing. The baby boomers grew up with the ghosts of modernist values, and so they had the benefit of both modernist values in their parents and the destruction of those values in postmodernist, but I would say that gen z and certainly gen alpha are living in a world whose values from the modern era have been thoroughly dismantled, and I think people are already starting to look for something to give lives meaning. Something else is going to come around that provides meaning and seems to make some kind of sense, and it's going to completely dismantle the post modern order. Human beings are not machines, and we're not computer programs, we live in meaning. A society that rejects meaning will inevitably self-destruct, and we are seeing Western Civilization self-destruct. That is always been my criticism of true nihilism, that if the world lacks value, meaning, or sense, people stop doing anything, and they have. The call for universal basic income and the desire to sit around playing video games all day is a final result of nihilism, because all you really want to do is avoid the stuff that hurts until you die of old age. The problem is that that's not a meaningful life, and so people are unhappy and they decide that it is the most logical thing to die -- which is exactly what we're seeing.
I certainly have no pretensions that my book is going to end up as anything other than a Dusty old tome in the national library, I speak of my own postmodernist brush with nihilism and existential crisis that came about thereby, and in the end I realized that I needed to accept a more intuitive worldview. As a human being, I'm impressed by things, I'm disgusted by other things, and any ideology that tells me that I don't feel these things when I do is obviously wrong. Therefore it makes a lot more sense to use that intuitive a sense to find meaning in the universe -- it is possible to live a good life, a great life today. It does entail a rejection of rejecting values, as I actually propose in the first chapter after the preface named "question everything and everyone -- especially me" where at the very end I suggest that we need to question questioning things, because eventually if you find an answer that's good enough for you, it doesn't make sense to keep picking it apart until there's nothing left.
One thing that I think is notable is that in philosophical circles where postmodernism first came from, the field is moved on. For one thing, there's a sort of metamodernism or post-postmodernism which it's sort of a reconciliation of the two, but also the field has moved on to be looking at other facets of philosophy such ae existentialism and the like. In this sense, our society is already significantly behind and it is just going to have to catch up.
Although world war II was the death rattle of the modernist period, the beginning of the end was world war i, since it was proof that the new liberal enlightened world order could still see the horrific situations as the battlefields of world war I. I guess it makes sense that a long and influential period which had reshaped the entire planet would take a little bit of time to fully die out. Art movements such as the dadaists are inherently postmodern and caused by a rejection of modernist values because they had led to such tragedy in Europe.
I guess it could be said that whereas world war II was the point that marked the departure between the modern era and the postmodern era for liberalism, in many parts of the world the publishing of the gulag archipelago was the point that marked the departure for marxists. Realizing that their ideology was not producing results that were morally Superior to liberals, it's similarly destroyed the grand narrative that was holding global Marxism together.
An important thing to have also be to define happiness. You could simply call happiness the raw emotional pleasure, but I think that that would be the wrong way to define it. The Nichomachean ethic introduced the idea of eudimonia as a counterpoint to raw hedonistic pleasure, has the pleasure from a life will lived and from actions well taken. From this point of view, if we are looking at the eudimonia definition of happiness it is self-evident that people are less happy because they are doing fewer things that lead to it.
I don't think you need to go into the pre-modern era to know people are happier in a non-postmodern context.
First of all, there are still modern civilizations on the planet. They are the civilizations which still rely heavily on modern or premodern values, such as religion, family, the nation and so on. A lot of Latin American countries are considerably more religious, but considerably more focus on family, and despite having markedly worse political and materialistic conditions compared to most postmodern civilizations, the people there are measurably happier.
Another example would be Southeast Asia, or even parts of Africa, both of which I've heard anecdotally are significantly happier than postmodern civilizations.
One fantastic example would be the same civilizations during the modern period compared to the post modern period. People in the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars we're willing to die on the battlefield for their values, and the civilizations were so vital that wars were happening relatively frequently has a release valve to get all of that vigor out somewhere. People are worried about world war 3, but my grandfather lied about his age in order to sign up for world war 2, today young people can't be hassled to even do the basic things of their own lives, they aren't having kids, they aren't participating in their communities, more able-bodied men are unemployed than most times through history, overall we're seeing entire civilizations commit suicide. The West is having its problems, but in China has similar issues despite being a quite different civilization. Xi jinping's call for a return to Maoism is a hope for a return to modernism, but it can't work -- you can stand in the same place in a stream, but the water has moved on and will never return.
Honestly, I think that we're already starting to see the postmodern worldview collapse because it doesn't really bring anything to the table other than nothing. The baby boomers grew up with the ghosts of modernist values, and so they had the benefit of both modernist values in their parents and the destruction of those values in postmodernist, but I would say that gen z and certainly gen alpha are living in a world whose values from the modern era have been thoroughly dismantled, and I think people are already starting to look for something to give lives meaning. Something else is going to come around that provides meaning and seems to make some kind of sense, and it's going to completely dismantle the post modern order. Human beings are not machines, and we're not computer programs, we live in meaning. A society that rejects meaning will inevitably self-destruct, and we are seeing Western Civilization self-destruct. That is always been my criticism of true nihilism, that if the world lacks value, meaning, or sense, people stop doing anything, and they have. The call for universal basic income and the desire to sit around playing video games all day is a final result of nihilism, because all you really want to do is avoid the stuff that hurts until you die of old age. The problem is that that's not a meaningful life, and so people are unhappy and they decide that it is the most logical thing to die -- which is exactly what we're seeing.
I certainly have no pretensions that my book is going to end up as anything other than a Dusty old tome in the national library, I speak of my own postmodernist brush with nihilism and existential crisis that came about thereby, and in the end I realized that I needed to accept a more intuitive worldview. As a human being, I'm impressed by things, I'm disgusted by other things, and any ideology that tells me that I don't feel these things when I do is obviously wrong. Therefore it makes a lot more sense to use that intuitive a sense to find meaning in the universe -- it is possible to live a good life, a great life today. It does entail a rejection of rejecting values, as I actually propose in the first chapter after the preface named "question everything and everyone -- especially me" where at the very end I suggest that we need to question questioning things, because eventually if you find an answer that's good enough for you, it doesn't make sense to keep picking it apart until there's nothing left.
One thing that I think is notable is that in philosophical circles where postmodernism first came from, the field is moved on. For one thing, there's a sort of metamodernism or post-postmodernism which it's sort of a reconciliation of the two, but also the field has moved on to be looking at other facets of philosophy such ae existentialism and the like. In this sense, our society is already significantly behind and it is just going to have to catch up.
I have over 100 trillion reasons hanging on my wall right now.
Zimbabwe, like many countries, excited to print rather than tax to pay for spending, and as a direct result the amount that you can buy with that money but they printed went down and down. I don't mean even 2% per year, or 10% per year, I mean the 100 trillion dollar bill on the top of my stack of Zimbabwean dollars couldn't buy a loaf of bread.
Inflation is a tax on the poor and working classes that ultimately ends up in the hands of the wealthy. It means that the wage that you negotiate is always slowly (or quickly) going down year by year, anyone who tries to save for anything or budget for something has those savings drained away as the value of the currency becomes worthless, while the rich who don't have money but instead own assets see the value of the assets that see the value of the assets they own which remains relatively constant in terms of the other things in the economy that you should be able to buy for the same amount continue to grow. The average wage got bumped up by maybe 4 or 5% this year, many people didn't get a raise this year, or got like a 2% raise. My stock portfolio went up by 12% (shame I work for a living and can't live off of 12% or nothing)
Eventually, the damage caused by excessive money printing destroys the entire country because all the wealth ends up in the hands of the super powerful, while the common Man struggles just to feed themselves, and the system collapses in one way or the other. The same sort of excessive money printing was part of what led to the collapse of France leading to the French revolution, it also was what ultimately led to the collapse of the Spanish empire and the reduction of Spain from the most powerful nation in the world at that time to a footnote. (Incidentally, Spain's inflation happened under a gold and silver standard, because they were able to bring over so much silver from the new world)
Zimbabwe, like many countries, excited to print rather than tax to pay for spending, and as a direct result the amount that you can buy with that money but they printed went down and down. I don't mean even 2% per year, or 10% per year, I mean the 100 trillion dollar bill on the top of my stack of Zimbabwean dollars couldn't buy a loaf of bread.
Inflation is a tax on the poor and working classes that ultimately ends up in the hands of the wealthy. It means that the wage that you negotiate is always slowly (or quickly) going down year by year, anyone who tries to save for anything or budget for something has those savings drained away as the value of the currency becomes worthless, while the rich who don't have money but instead own assets see the value of the assets that see the value of the assets they own which remains relatively constant in terms of the other things in the economy that you should be able to buy for the same amount continue to grow. The average wage got bumped up by maybe 4 or 5% this year, many people didn't get a raise this year, or got like a 2% raise. My stock portfolio went up by 12% (shame I work for a living and can't live off of 12% or nothing)
Eventually, the damage caused by excessive money printing destroys the entire country because all the wealth ends up in the hands of the super powerful, while the common Man struggles just to feed themselves, and the system collapses in one way or the other. The same sort of excessive money printing was part of what led to the collapse of France leading to the French revolution, it also was what ultimately led to the collapse of the Spanish empire and the reduction of Spain from the most powerful nation in the world at that time to a footnote. (Incidentally, Spain's inflation happened under a gold and silver standard, because they were able to bring over so much silver from the new world)
The internet is a mirror, it reflects back what you put into it.
Of course, some people want to inject politics into every single thing that we do, and some people want to inject bad lessons into everything we do, but you can use it to learn math, science, crafts, skilled trades, you can learn about literature, history, philosophy.
On the other hand, you should eventually step away from the screen, and go do some of those things that you learn about online. My beloved Soviet canuckistan is presently an Arctic hellscape, but when we end up getting our 37 minutes of summer, I intend to go out and play with a new kiln I bought for firing pottery and melting different metals.
Earlier today I made a post about the concept that the state owns you as opposed to you owning yourself. If you own yourself, and I think that most people should want to, it ends up becoming contingent upon yourself to come up with plans. The world is an adventure, there is so much out there, and so many things you can do without a penny, but just as you said, you need to get out of the house in order to actually participate, and you need to put in the effort to find those exciting things because no one else is going to do it for you.
In Plato's allegory of the cave, is the understanding of the forms which releases you from your bonds and sends you into the wilderness, but I think in postmodern society it is actually embracing your personal autonomy. For many people, if they see you doing something that they don't like, if they hear you saying something that they don't like, if they think that you think something that they don't like, and they get all of their opinions and actions from someone else so they don't need to and don't get to choose their opinions or their actions on their own, and they see someone else thinking for themselves and acting for themselves, and of course it enrages them because they know what they've lost even if they don't understand it.
All materialists are wrong -- if improved material conditions was all it took to be happy, then we should live in the happiest era in the history of the world because we have more stuff and nicer stuff than ever before in our lives. What it takes to be happy is something metaphysical, perhaps the satisfaction of creating something worthwhile, of sacrificing and seeing that sacrifice come to positive fruition, becoming better than you were yesterday and being able to look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you are a better person today than you were yesterday, or participating in a real life community that provides social stability to everyone within it and your role being important to many other people's lives and you know it. The people who are happy seem to be the ones who are chasing those metaphysical things rather than more material possessions.
Another thing along the same lines though is that there is a group of people who think that the key to fulfillment is trying to change the entire world, and many of those people are among the most miserable people on earth so I think that that tells you something as well -- that what really matters is making changes that actually affect your life or the people around you or the people that you actually care about, and if you try to take on the entire world and you aren't the sort of generational power that can go out and actually do something like that, you're just going to be even more miserable.
Of course, some people want to inject politics into every single thing that we do, and some people want to inject bad lessons into everything we do, but you can use it to learn math, science, crafts, skilled trades, you can learn about literature, history, philosophy.
On the other hand, you should eventually step away from the screen, and go do some of those things that you learn about online. My beloved Soviet canuckistan is presently an Arctic hellscape, but when we end up getting our 37 minutes of summer, I intend to go out and play with a new kiln I bought for firing pottery and melting different metals.
Earlier today I made a post about the concept that the state owns you as opposed to you owning yourself. If you own yourself, and I think that most people should want to, it ends up becoming contingent upon yourself to come up with plans. The world is an adventure, there is so much out there, and so many things you can do without a penny, but just as you said, you need to get out of the house in order to actually participate, and you need to put in the effort to find those exciting things because no one else is going to do it for you.
In Plato's allegory of the cave, is the understanding of the forms which releases you from your bonds and sends you into the wilderness, but I think in postmodern society it is actually embracing your personal autonomy. For many people, if they see you doing something that they don't like, if they hear you saying something that they don't like, if they think that you think something that they don't like, and they get all of their opinions and actions from someone else so they don't need to and don't get to choose their opinions or their actions on their own, and they see someone else thinking for themselves and acting for themselves, and of course it enrages them because they know what they've lost even if they don't understand it.
All materialists are wrong -- if improved material conditions was all it took to be happy, then we should live in the happiest era in the history of the world because we have more stuff and nicer stuff than ever before in our lives. What it takes to be happy is something metaphysical, perhaps the satisfaction of creating something worthwhile, of sacrificing and seeing that sacrifice come to positive fruition, becoming better than you were yesterday and being able to look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you are a better person today than you were yesterday, or participating in a real life community that provides social stability to everyone within it and your role being important to many other people's lives and you know it. The people who are happy seem to be the ones who are chasing those metaphysical things rather than more material possessions.
Another thing along the same lines though is that there is a group of people who think that the key to fulfillment is trying to change the entire world, and many of those people are among the most miserable people on earth so I think that that tells you something as well -- that what really matters is making changes that actually affect your life or the people around you or the people that you actually care about, and if you try to take on the entire world and you aren't the sort of generational power that can go out and actually do something like that, you're just going to be even more miserable.
Isn't that the dude who made a bunch of 80 iq comedy movies?
Maybe he should just stick to that....
Maybe he should just stick to that....
I like chai tea lattes (can't speak to Starbucks mind you, not a huge thing up here)... If those are gay, it's like the gay who does your interior decoration and helps you pick out a suit.
"not like me, John Bolton. I could be a great dictator. Look at all the dictatorships I helped.set up throughout my career!"
Worst hiring decision Trump ever made, and he's made a lot of them.
Worst hiring decision Trump ever made, and he's made a lot of them.
On Lemmy there uses to be a server called wolfballs. Now I understand why some people would block wolfballs back then, it was in some ways highly partisan leaning heavily right... It had lots of the content that wasn't allowed under most other instances.
But here's the thing: that instance shut down before 90% of instances today existed, like a year or two before the great reddit migration. So the admins of those instances don't even know what a wolfballs is, they just blocked a site that doesn't even exist and has never existed at the same time as their own instances. I feel like it's "I was just following orders to fight the bad guys!"
Anyway, it makes me thankful for all the chill people I can hang with here. Sit down with me 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and 5 years ago and you'll be talking to a different person each time with fundamentally different beliefs in some areas (not everything, but my life is so fundamentally different than it was 15 years ago, if I were to hold on to every single piece of who I was back then, it just wouldn't make any sense). Really thankful for all the people who are coming with me on my journey to try to understand the world and understand myself, and some of the dumb things I say along the way LOL.
But here's the thing: that instance shut down before 90% of instances today existed, like a year or two before the great reddit migration. So the admins of those instances don't even know what a wolfballs is, they just blocked a site that doesn't even exist and has never existed at the same time as their own instances. I feel like it's "I was just following orders to fight the bad guys!"
Anyway, it makes me thankful for all the chill people I can hang with here. Sit down with me 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and 5 years ago and you'll be talking to a different person each time with fundamentally different beliefs in some areas (not everything, but my life is so fundamentally different than it was 15 years ago, if I were to hold on to every single piece of who I was back then, it just wouldn't make any sense). Really thankful for all the people who are coming with me on my journey to try to understand the world and understand myself, and some of the dumb things I say along the way LOL.
I'm sometimes surprised at the number of people who feel the need to block me.
It's like.... If you feel the need to block some middle of the road Canadian maybe public discourse isn't for you. Maybe you should go journal instead.
(But hey, my blocklist is still empty)
It's like.... If you feel the need to block some middle of the road Canadian maybe public discourse isn't for you. Maybe you should go journal instead.
(But hey, my blocklist is still empty)
I mean, it's a giant Pink billboard so maybe for the sort of people that a giant Pink billboard is meant to appeal to it is. Along with the entire Middle East...
Tankies don't hate cops, they just want the cops to work for them. It's in the name.