Modern politics forces people into polarity. This is not an issue of left-right, but really a question of “what issue will decide the election?” We tend to pick politicians, and vote for plans, based on a single consideration at a time. This is part of the way group dynamics work: in order to get change, [...]
Posts under ‘Socialization’
Time
When we think about politics, we tend to abstract away our concerns into measurable things, or at least, things that we can measure laterally. Money. Lives lost. Surveys. These things oddly are tangible, in part because they’re intangible. Putting them in numbers renders the unknown to the known and the manipulable. That makes us feel [...]
Competition creates conformity
All of us who grew up in the West grew up under a mythos that liberty, capitalism and freedom were better than the regimented societies we saw in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and North Korea. The problem with this myth is that it’s true. Having someone tell you what to do is a motivation killer, [...]
Homogeneity and the blank slate
In this topsy-turvy world, the fools are sure they are geniuses. Some may even be very intelligent and even genius by the IQ test marker, because intelligence generates such a flood of information it makes people easier to mislead. Ultimately what makes someone a fool is their will to mislead themselves. Even very smart fools [...]
A flat plastic world
Life has many paradoxes, and many of those are caused by a simple principle: whenever you pass over any kind of border, all values become inverted. This is because context has changed, and you are now looking for the antithesis of what defined whatever was on the other side of the border. The paradox of [...]
Political consequences of social malfunction
A simple fact of life: people with bad intent will generally recommend things that produce bad results. We are taught to disregard this fact because there are vultures and parasites all around us who benefit from our ignorance. In politics, a specialized class of people exists to convince us that politics is complicated and separate [...]
The infamous twenty minute date
Some years ago, in London, England, I went often to practice at a Ki-Aikido club. It was there that I met a visiting student from another club, whom I was quite attracted to, and, as it turned out, so was she to me. Nothing came of that attraction for a week or two, until she [...]
Attack of the hive mind
Conservatives make our first and most deadly mistake when we treat liberalism as a political movement. If analyzed by its actions and not its words, liberalism is not a political viewpoint, but rather a social activity which has political consequences. Like a cult, it bases its power on its ability to include other people for [...]
Civil disobedience
A recurring comic theme in the film Dr. Strangelove is the juxtaposition of obedient social etiquette contrasted to nuclear apocalypse looming in the background. President Muffley calls Dmitri the Soviet Premier on the phone: “Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri. Clear and plain and coming through fine. I’m coming through fine, too? Good, then! [...]
Babysitting
Time is precious. As far as we know, we live, then we die. Maybe there’s something afterwards; maybe not. Either way, we don’t get to be us again. We can’t go back to being two years younger, or not knowing something that scares us once we’ve learned it. Life is a rare commodity. And yet, [...]
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