Political compass for the21st century

[Eric the Green]

(02-07-2019, 09:19 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Regarding Jefferson:

https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-as-Rel...B003XT60BS

In this book, Paul Vitz discusses the modern "humanistic psychology" and its cult of self-actualisation. He names three sources for this worldview:

• Feuerbach (a German philosopher who inspired Carl Marx)
  
• the American Revolution with its slogan, "don't tread on me". (edited)
  
• some varieties of liberal protestantism which did away with the idea of original sin
  

There is no question that the corrosive countercultural ideas of 1960s and 70s were inspired by this radical individualism fashionable among intellectuals, rather than by Marxism which is after all a collectivistic, working-class ideology. Actual Marxist regimes can be very tough on drugs, sexuality, religion, etc.

To be more exact: within the American Revolution, there seems to have been a proto-Democrat current led by Jefferson, and proto-Republican current led by Alexander Hamilton. I argue that the counterculturals are among the heirs of the Jeffersonian current.

I tend to dissent on knocking countercultural ideas of the 1960s and 70s as corrosive. Without endorsing all its activities and impacts, and not myself being dependent on its drugs, I submit that it was primarily liberating and empowering.

Self-actualization is not a cult, but a valuable project more significant than most projects people engage in today. It's primary influences are not primarily radical individualism, but the depth psychology of Jung, Reich, Maslow, and Fritz Perls, along with their preceding influences in turn. Some valuable info may be posted here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_therapy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization
https://www.verywellmind.com/characteris...le-2795963

An important point in gestalt therapy, is recognizing that there's no self without the other; "I-Thou" as Martin Buber put it.

It is much more significant to rely on facts, rather than prejudices and your own resentments to get a good picture of movements within society and their supposed place on a chart.

There is a Jeffersonian current to the sixties counter-culture, as signified by the name of its leading rock band. But others charge that it is communist and Marxist. It is more properly seen as a synthesis of the two. The counterculture releases creativity and imagination and questions authority, and is individualist in that sense. But it also creates communes and upholds togetherness in love-ins and mutual aid at free stores and coops. 

It creates local economies that are independent of the large corporate structure and perhaps without the commercial monetary system, but relies on people joining together in joint local enterprises. It is not a working class ideology, and doesn't want to herd people into state-owned factories, but is also oriented away from corporate market capitalism and market/money/property values and seeks a lifestyle, values-scale and economy not dependent on the commercial corporate market orientation of capitalism.

A cliffnotes summary:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides...-the-1960s
Another summary more extensive:
https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresource...ulture.pdf
In the decade after 1965, radicals responded to the alienating features of America’s technocratic society by developing alternative cultures that emphasized authenticity, individualism, and community.
http://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view...9175-e-392
A Reality Trip on the Freaks: A Historiography of the Counter-Culture
see pages 20-26:
http://humboldt-dspace.calstate.edu/bits...sequence=1