We're WEIRD. Get over it.

[pbrower2a]

(09-19-2020, 08:48 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-19-2020, 05:10 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Still going through the book, trying to sort things into my perspective.  Thing is, here we are used to dividing things by red and blue, by the difference between the cavalier and roundhead cultures, both of which contributed to America, one of the WEIRDest places on the globe.

And the opposite of WEIRD seems to be tribal.  You are part of a group.  Things are centered on obligations and relationships to the tribe.  So the WEIRD people are individualistic readers who adhere to principles, while the tribal are more rural, group oriented folks who are slow to accept outsider as part of the tribe.

OK.  While I am with America being much more WEIRD that most nations, is the red blue, cavalier roundhead, rural urban divide we have been discussing between the urban WEIRD people and the more tribal group thinking cavaliers?  Did the cavalier roundhead conflict began between a high church rural less reading more listen to the hierarchy bunch, against a more urban, reading, industrializing, changing government faction?  Do we connect racial tensions with rural groups that are still more tribal and ready to reject those outside the tribe?  If America is WEIRD and getting more so, is it the roundheads - abolitionists - blues that are dragging the cavaliers - slavers - reds along kicking and screaming?

If so, it would be ironic.  Americans are as WEIRD as anybody, the blues dragging the reds along though they are resisting.  If Americans are WEIRD, Classic will have to lay off calling the rural faction America.  America is WEIRD, and becoming more so with every 4T.

On Earth 2, the opposite of weird is normal.

America's economic elites are proving themselves far more adept at grabbing the fruits of prosperity than at creating prosperity. America is now normal, I suppose, if "normal" means something like Imperial Russia in its last years, when this was the reality:

Quote:America is unique which may be weird to Europeans who live in Democratic socialist countries that don't change much on their own.

Which may be the optimum as Humanity reaches the end of the line in which further increases in material production reliably bring happiness. Out economic elites seem to have ideas still tied to the early-industrial era in which toil under hardship was the key to prosperity. Today hardship is the clear antithesis of prosperity; it is only poverty. Economic rationality requires a market lest the system make stuff that nobody wants.   

Quote:I agree that blues are more weird than the reds. As a matter of fact, we've been telling the blues that for years. We've used terms like warped minds, libtards, loonies or crazy liberals to describe blue weirdness.

The author's position is not that the Western mainstream (at least since the Renaissance) is psychotic; it is that the Western mainstream was early to do the unexpected in many ways -- such as relying upon markets instead of upon tradition. 

As I see it, genius is knowing the rules, breaking them, getting away with them, and establishing one's new way of doing things as the new norm. Consider that until a certain time one of the most predictable clichés was that innocent, appropriate love ends up living "happily ever after". Such is what one reasonably expects in Romeo and Juliet until the last scene. I'm sure that you are aware of the play, but in essence the background overpowers the innocent love. We all know what happens, and Shakespeare makes it logically right and even necessary, Before the Bard, anyone who had that sort of ending was crazy. Since Shakespeare it has been possible to have stories in which bad things happen to innocent lovers. 

Quote:I don't see the weird dragging the reds like you do in your own weird perspective.

The Red perspective is one of cultural staleness, continuing inequity, and a lack of social progress in return for enhanced productivity.  That is not a good idea.   

Quote:I don't know if that makes sense to someone normal but it's the best that I can do without being a weird.

Air conditioning that you work on was originally a WEIRD idea. Without it, cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and Miami could not function. Places like Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Washington DC would not do as well. With global warming as a certainty, places like the Twin Cities and Detroit (the latter not only for economic distress) will be miserable places. Big businesses often have air conditioning because such is good for maximal productivity and quality control.   

Quote:I see weird strongholds attracting more weird and getting more weird while losing more and more normal. It fit's my belief that there's a process of natural selection going on within the country right now. A natural process that can only occur in a free country like America. I mean, people tearing down statues associated with their freedom is weird to me. But then again, I'm not weird.

If you are thinking of statues dedicated to Confederate military and political figures, then contemplate what some black child might think when seeing such statues in some Southern city when those statues honor people who tried to keep that child's black ancestors in slavery. It is no longer weird to contemplate taking down such statues. Wouldn't a statue of Sir Winston Churchill be more appropriate?