Political compass for the21st century

[pbrower2a]

(03-08-2019, 04:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(03-01-2019, 11:12 PM)

Quote:pbrower2a Wrote:

It could be the next Idealist generation that has some recognition of X for leaving behind a better world than they inherited, and for not demanding too much to make the world good for the new Idealists. 

Xers haven't done much yet to clean up the problems of this saeculum. The problems of this saeculum are not due to silents and boomers who neglected them as children. The problems are due to all the generations who neglected the heritage of the New Deal and threw it over to embrace the neo-liberalism of Ronald Reagan. The Xers grew up under this and embraced it, and did not work to stop it. That is up to the millennials now. Xers failed, and Boomers failed too, although at least many boomers in youth caught a vision of a better day. And recently, a certain millennial sang about it.

Some of the boomers and Xers can still get up and help lead the millennials in this task; the saeculum still has 10 rocky years to run yet. The Crisis climax still ahead may yet bring out the best in all 3 generations.

As is often my wont, when someone revives the activity in a thread I go back reading it...and I see something that everyone missed. X'ers have done little to clean up the mess that GI's. the Silent, and Boomers have created... in part because many have spent their whole adult lives knowing only one purpose in life in a heartless plutocracy: making people already filthy-rich even more filthy-rich, or on the other side, getting an early break because one is born into a privilege milieu and getting to stay there by enforcing the rules of a plutocratic order. The neoliberal era offered an order that considered monopoly and vertical integration the natural order of things, with those in power using it to reward people for already being rich and powerful. The proper way in which to deal with an inequitable order without overthrowing it is to start mom-and-pop businesses which demand much and offer little initially, but usually become more remunerative over time. Note well that the inheritors of assets and the bureaucratic elites in corporate behemoths often do everything possible to destroy competition should it start to challenge the economic and administrative hierarchy.

If a plutocratic elite is ever overthrown, then the solution is more safely a free-wheeling capitalist order of small business instead of Marxism-Leninism. Free-wheeling capitalism does not need bureaucratic control unless to suppress crime and commercial chicanery, or perhaps to foster some level of welfare state to protect the helpless (typically the very young, the very old, and the disabled). Ideally the Common Man has some moral compass.

Boom adulthood begins with the recognition that the assembly-line is no place for finding happiness in life. So Boomers rejected the assembly line and when X started to enter adulthood X found that the factory jobs were gone. Note well: the factory has typically been the most reliable means of getting away from grinding poverty. Well-paying government jobs depend upon a broad base of taxpayers being able to earn copious income, buy stuff that can be taxed, and of course own property suitable for property taxes. Education has its highest return of investment in preparing people for semi-skilled work such as operating machinery or working an assembly line -- and not in translating cuneiform inscriptions into idiomatic English. (It may be almost facetious to say that many academics simply get paid for doing a hobby and talking about it in a few hours of teaching each week. It's a great life, but only a few can get away with it without the overall economy going into the tank).

X entered the workforce about when giant corporations once renowned as manufacturers (like General Electric, RCA. IBM, Xerox, Philips (known in America either as Norelco or Magnavox), and of course what remained of the American textile industry became importers because kids raised as peasant farmers in very poor countries thought that working on an assembly-line was a boon instead of mind-rotting drudgery. The Lost made America a better place through enterprise; X had no choice except to pretend to accept the idea that the elites offered: that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as it improves the economic position of people who own far more than they could possibly use, who can indulge themselves without conscience in the presence of grave hardship for everyone else, and who have established a command-and-control system almost as repressive in the 'free-enterprise' workplace as a prison. If one takes the trend in inequality far enough one ends up with the condition of the Gulag or a plantation in which all one can hope for is to earn "three hots and a cot". OK, maybe one has a TV that offers mind-rotting 'entertainment'. To most fully appreciate  a thoroughly-rotten order, stupidity is a solid aid.  

As you can imagine, I have little good to say about Boom executives, arguably the worst exploiters in American history since the end of the antebellum slave system who aren't outright criminals. They took advantage of their roles as gatekeepers to ensure that they had no meaningful competition from talented people from below to get incomes that allow them to live like sultans while workers' pay stagnated or even shrank. Boomer landlords, if they owned residential property in places with vibrant economies, could lease tiny slum-like flats at rates that one associates with 'luxury' hotels. For these elites the word luxury became the Great Quest as if it were righteous among the devout or enlightenment among the curious. 

The rotten system either humanizes itself or collapses. Watch the next few years.

[Captain Genet]

Ah, I forgot to say that I strongly appreciate the contributions of PBrower2a to this thread. But I disagree with the idea that ancient and medieval societies cannot be fit into my diagram.

-Ancient Egypt would be a Theocracy, and so would be the Maya states
-China, as I said, would be a Confucian philosophocracy which I regard as a special case of Theocracy. Then Taoism is very similar to Inclusivism, with its reverence for nature, spontaneity and softness.
-The city republics of Ancient Greece and Italy would be in the Nationalist sector. Aristotle is a prime example of a moderate democratic Nationalist of ancient Greece.
-The Hellenistic kingdoms and Roman Empire were certainly plutocratic, and quite inclusive culturally. I suspect they could fit in the Yellow sector, closer to Purple than Blue.
-Medieval Catholic kingdoms were theocracies and so were some Protestant republics like Calvin's Geneva, which seems rather hardcore. The wars between Protestantism and Catholicism were between Yellow-tinged Blue and pure Blue.

[Captain Genet]

I added some culture vultures, just for PBrower

I'd place Tolstoy as well, but he would be very similar to Stapledon. Both wanted to apply Christian morality in a democratic, rational framework, though Stapledon's contemplation of death of our species and birth of future mankinds would be dismissed by Tolstoy as useless, as he focused on practical, down-to-Earth topics.

[Einzige]

Political spectrum charts, quadrants, etc. are stupid. This, in particular- Blake for example was definitely a "Proletarianist" (read what he had to say about "dark Satanic mills" for example).

[pbrower2a]

(03-02-2021, 11:37 AM)Einzige Wrote: Political spectrum charts, quadrants, etc. are stupid. This, in particular- Blake for example was definitely a "Proletarianist" (read what he had to say about "dark Satanic mills" for example).

You missed much of the discussion. As important as which of the five sectors one is in is how far one is from the comparatively non-violent center more likely to parley than to 'liquidate'. Those at the extremes in all sectors except the "Inclusionist" sector are either killers or stand for ideologies that have done mass-killing or have no problem with mass death in the name of their revolution. OK, there have been Marxist regimes that have left the world with great body counts, so why does Ayn Rand, who is nearly an antithesis of Marx in ideology go to the edge in the "pro-market" (I am tempted to call it "plutocratic") sector? As I discussed it, I convinced the creator of this model that Ayn Rand, who has never inspired a regime based on her ideology to emerge, I can imagine it as a nightmare of hunger, exposure, and harsh management for those who do not have what it takes to fit into such a utopia. Those unfit for that order die off, and Humanity becomes better suited for an economic hierarchy in which owners and bosses determine everything, including life and death through hunger, exposure, and penal brutality. Rand's utopia looks flawed as Marx' utopia. Marx and Rand differ not so much in seeing capitalism as a cruel, wasteful, and destructive order; they differ in whether they endorse or condemn the worst features of capitalist plutocracy.

Pinochet and Thatcher are both in what I call the plutocratic sector, but there is a big difference between them in the body counts of their governments. Anyone who disputed Pinochet's assumption that no human suffering was ever in excess if it fostered plutocratic power, indulgence, and gain who did not leave fast enough might disappear, first to a torture chamber. British Labour had no such fear under Thatcher.  Likewise I came to suggest that while someone like the late Jerry Falwell was a vile prick I could not see him sending gays and lesbians to concentration camps. Second-class citizenship, perhaps, but people can survive second-class citizenship as under Jim Crow or Apartheid. Be a heretic under Khomeini and you could end up quite seriously dead. 

The center, the white zone in which people seem to have more flexibility on core issues, is where one gets the pols more likely to find compromises that meld bits and pieces from multiple traditions. Yes, there are people on or near the borderline between two sectors (an example would be the Strasser brothers Georg and Otto, who wanted to put emphasis on the "socialist" claims of National Socialism (Nazism). Hitler sold out quickly to the economic elites, but Georg and Otto Strasser both held that the Jew was by 'race' incompatible with socialism. (Marx wrote a disgusting pamphlet explaining that Jews could be good socialists only if they gave up their religious heritage and thus their passion for economic gain. I once used that against someone who smeared Jews as inherent Commies as in the dreadful Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin (Dietrich Eckart, a mentor of Hitler).

Being near the center but having marked tendencis toward one quadrant means less than the difference between the near-center and the extreme. Obama is far closer to Lech Walesa than to Rajneesh, and FDR is far closer to Merkel than to Stalin.  Just because Walesa is more of a nationalist than anything else (he is not really a theocrat or a socialist) and that drawing a ray from the center to the middle of the brown zone of nationalism takes one to Adolf Hitler doesn't make him much like Hitler. The social-market system that Merkel endorses is far from the sadistic economics of Ayn Rand. But even just inside a zone... Mandela and Orban do not have blood on their hands as do Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco. 

OK. So what of the cultural figures? Dostoevsky is clearly a conservative with an idealized view of the Russian Orthodox Church as the solution for all things.  Roddenberry suggests that in Star Trek time, the world would be more inclusive and that economic distress is  no longer a necessity as a spur to honorable and productive behavior, as technology has solved all questions other than interstellar conflicts involving the Klingons and Romulans. (I'd put Rod Serling, and Isaac Asimov here, too. Ray Bradbury would be near the Capitalist than to the Socialist line. Of course the unforgettable line from Woody Allen "whenever I hear Wagner I think of invading Poland" fits. OK, listen to Franz Liszt's Les Preludes and you might get the delusion that you could take on the United States of America and not face dire consequences.   

I don't know where one would put such figures as Shakespeare, Mozart, or Degas.

[Eric the Green]

(02-27-2021, 05:44 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: Ah, I forgot to say that I strongly appreciate the contributions of PBrower2a to this thread. But I disagree with the idea that ancient and medieval societies cannot be fit into my diagram.

-Ancient Egypt would be a Theocracy, and so would be the Maya states
-China, as I said, would be a Confucian philosophocracy which I regard as a special case of Theocracy. Then Taoism is very similar to Inclusivism, with its reverence for nature, spontaneity and softness.
-The city republics of Ancient Greece and Italy would be in the Nationalist sector. Aristotle is a prime example of a moderate democratic Nationalist of ancient Greece.
-The Hellenistic kingdoms and Roman Empire were certainly plutocratic, and quite inclusive culturally. I suspect they could fit in the Yellow sector, closer to Purple than Blue.
-Medieval Catholic kingdoms were theocracies and so were some Protestant republics like Calvin's Geneva, which seems rather hardcore. The wars between Protestantism and Catholicism were between Yellow-tinged Blue and pure Blue.

AH, so you are Bill the Piper. I see the connections. Down with hedonism! Tech forever! Welcome back.

[Captain Genet]

(03-02-2021, 04:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: AH, so you are Bill the Piper. I see the connections. Down with hedonism! Tech forever! Welcome back.

Here again you oversimplify my positions. It took me some time to think how I should respond to it.

"Down with hedonism" - I do disagree with hedonism as a philosophical position that pleasure is the supreme good. It's great to enjoy wine, women and song, but a civilized person puts other, more complex goals first. But societies and movements opposed to all pleasure often end up stagnant and opposed to most innovation, like the Amish or Orthodox Jews. This is certainly not my ideal.

"Tech forever" - I hope that modern tech never gets lost. But today overuse of digital technologies, cutting people away from own bodies and emotions and from other people, is a bigger threat than technological regress. I have criticized Millennials for that, but you choose to overlook this part of my message. Extropianism, as defined by Max More in 1988, values above all "intelligence, functional order, vitality, energy, life, experience, and capacity and drive for improvement and growth". Yes, this includes tech and in my previous incarnation I have advocated perhaps too much for biotechnological solutions. But living things have more extropy than computers. Social organization is certainly extropy. Art is extropy too.

[pbrower2a]

(03-14-2021, 11:35 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:

(03-02-2021, 04:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: AH, so you are Bill the Piper. I see the connections. Down with hedonism! Tech forever! Welcome back.

Here again you oversimplify my positions. It took me some time to think how I should respond to it.

"Down with hedonism" - I do disagree with hedonism as a philosophical position that pleasure is the supreme good. It's great to enjoy wine, women and song, but a civilized person puts other, more complex goals first. But societies and movements opposed to all pleasure often end up stagnant and opposed to most innovation, like the Amish or Orthodox Jews. This is certainly not my ideal.

Yes. Hedonism at best is play, and play is often the best way to learn certain things and develop talents. Maybe the real problem is with witless debauchery, abandonment of which makes one "healthier, wealthier, and wiser" (to suggest Benjamin Franklin). Fully enjoying a woman (and hoping that she fully enjoys me) with Mozart on the stereo and a nice Cabernet readily available sounds really, really good. 

Hedonism is a rightful reward for competent work, prudence in spending habits, and loyalty to extant organizations. It is a valid incentive. Medals are not enough. 

I am not well aware of Orthodox Jews, although I see Reform Judaism fitting much that I am. As for the Old Order Amish... I live near many of them. Theirs is a hard way of life, but I recognize their virtues. These are the sorts of people who will thrive if the bureaucratic cover for American commercial inequity collapses. The Old Order Amish are good businesspeople; it is just that their world has no room for bloated bureaucracies to fill with people too over-educated to do farm work or carpentry. Education to eighth grade and only until age sixteen does not fit me.    

Quote:"Tech forever" - I hope that modern tech never gets lost. But today overuse of digital technologies, cutting people away from own bodies and emotions and from other people, is a bigger threat than technological regress. I have criticized Millennials for that, but you choose to overlook this part of my message. Extropianism, as defined by Max More in 1988, values above all "intelligence, functional order, vitality, energy, life, experience, and capacity and drive for improvement and growth". Yes, this includes tech and in my previous incarnation I have advocated perhaps too much for biotechnological solutions. But living things have more extropy than computers. Social organization is certainly extropy. Art is extropy too.

As a rule, one technology supplants another as a newer one is more efficient in use of materials and in the techniques of manufacturing. Even something so banal as container freight has its purposes: reducing the number of hands for moving freight from one conveyance (between ships, rail, and trucks) to another... and greatly reducing pilferage, once a big cost of shipping. I am reminded of an old Mad Magazine spoof on the way of life of longshoremen, which included the question

"How many color TV's do you have?"

If you didn't have one, then you weren't a real dock hand. Dock workers were paid basically little in wages but whatever they could steal. That is a corrupt arrangement, but something understandable. Color televisions back then were still luxuries, and stevedores rarely paid for the ones that they got. Maybe they traded something else expensive, like liquor, for a color TV set. 

Mainframe computers used to be costly; now they are mostly worthless. The space necessary for one of those might now as well have a more profitable soft-drink machine. Recorded VHS tapes? When was the last time that you watched one? Do you still have a console TV from the 1970's, perhaps in French Provincial? Nice cabinet... but what could you do with it. It is obsolete. Shopping malls, once the definitive expression of American consumerism, are often dying. 

It is possible to save some money by not being an early-adapter, but that goes only so far. At a certain point you are simply accepting someone else's junk... like his LP records of Guy Lombardo, Liberace, or 101 Strings.

[Eric the Green]

(03-14-2021, 11:35 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:

(03-02-2021, 04:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: AH, so you are Bill the Piper. I see the connections. Down with hedonism! Tech forever! Welcome back.

Here again you oversimplify my positions. It took me some time to think how I should respond to it.

"Down with hedonism" - I do disagree with hedonism as a philosophical position that pleasure is the supreme good. It's great to enjoy wine, women and song, but a civilized person puts other, more complex goals first. But societies and movements opposed to all pleasure often end up stagnant and opposed to most innovation, like the Amish or Orthodox Jews. This is certainly not my ideal.

"Tech forever" - I hope that modern tech never gets lost. But today overuse of digital technologies, cutting people away from own bodies and emotions and from other people, is a bigger threat than technological regress. I have criticized Millennials for that, but you choose to overlook this part of my message. Extropianism, as defined by Max More in 1988, values above all "intelligence, functional order, vitality, energy, life, experience, and capacity and drive for improvement and growth". Yes, this includes tech and in my previous incarnation I have advocated perhaps too much for biotechnological solutions. But living things have more extropy than computers. Social organization is certainly extropy. Art is extropy too.

Ah, so the new incarnation of you has more moderated positions. Very good.

Now, maybe you can begin to see that "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll", as the modern-day version of wine, women and song, has its place too, and I agree that "a civilized person puts other, more complex goals first". I also contend that the 2nd-turning version was better than the 3T version, because it had its high-art "extropy" aspects. These may not be so apparent in the portion that is readily available on mainstream media. That's why I recommend you peruse my list! 
http://philosopherswheel.com/ericrock.html (and brower too; he still prefers the previous 4T version)

And I recommend Joseph Campbell's statement that art at its best is the handmaiden of religious experience.

I see how the word "extropy" relates to "entropy," the 2nd law of thermodynamics used to propose the ultimate run-down of the universe, and how extropy might be an alternative to this supposed destiny. If that's what it means, heartily agree. I believe some people used the word "negentropy" for this, probably based on the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Again, welcome back.

[pbrower2a]

Technology changes things. Automobiles changed the way in which people dated. People used to rely upon the narrow opportunities in small towns and in limited neighborhoods, but once people could drive twenty miles that expanded opportunity greatly. Could i (in theory) date someone a hundred miles away? Sure, and I would think little of the difficulty. Maybe I would find it easier to find someone more similar to me. Radio made the opera and symphony available (when NBC actually had concerts on the air, as is still the norm for some state-run radio broadcasters such as the BBC. Cinema put some excellent drama and comedy in reach of millions who would have never had them (although that would have been more true in the 1930's than now). It was a good way of disseminating culture and politics. Propaganda? Of course. There's always a dark side and that says more about people than about amoral technology.

As with economic assets or bureaucratic power, what people do with a technology says more of them than does the technology. There were plenty of honorable or at least benign things to do with automobiles. John Dillinger found some horrible uses for automobiles. Radio could as easily disseminate Josef Goebbels as Billy Graham. The same technology that allows a record company to press audio recordings of Mozart piano concertos can also press audio recordings of "Cop Killer". And, yes, beware the Dark Web.

[beechnut79]

(03-18-2021, 05:24 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Technology changes things. Automobiles changed the way in which people dated. People used to rely upon the narrow opportunities in small towns and in limited neighborhoods, but once people could drive twenty miles that expanded opportunity greatly. Could i (in theory) date someone a hundred miles away? Sure, and I would think little of the difficulty. Maybe I would find it easier to find someone more similar to me. Radio made the opera and symphony available (when NBC actually had concerts on the air, as is still the norm for some state-run radio broadcasters such as the BBC. Cinema put some excellent drama and comedy in reach of millions who would have never had them (although that would have been more true in the 1930's than now).   It was a good way of disseminating culture and politics. Propaganda? Of course. There's always a dark side and that says more about people than about amoral technology.

As with economic assets or bureaucratic power, what people do with a technology says more of them than does the technology. There were plenty of honorable or at least benign things to do with automobiles. John Dillinger found some horrible uses for automobiles. Radio could as easily disseminate Josef Goebbels as Billy Graham. The same technology that allows a record company to press audio recordings of Mozart piano concertos can also press audio recordings of "Cop Killer". And, yes, beware the Dark Web.

(John Dillinger found some horrible uses for automobiles). Likewise for Ted Buddy, Gary Ridgway, and urban street gangs when they unleash their firepower on passers by. More often than not they end up killing innocents rather than their intended targets.

[pbrower2a]

Nitpick: Ted Bundy typically killed by ligature strangulation or blunt-force trauma. He was never known to use a firearm of any kind.

[Captain Genet]

(03-18-2021, 01:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Ah, so the new incarnation of you has more moderated positions. Very good.

Now, maybe you can begin to see that "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll", as the modern-day version of wine, women and song, has its place too, and I agree that "a civilized person puts other, more complex goals first". I also contend that the 2nd-turning version was better than the 3T version, because it had its high-art "extropy" aspects. These may not be so apparent in the portion that is readily available on mainstream media. That's why I recommend you peruse my list! 
http://philosopherswheel.com/ericrock.html (and brower too; he still prefers the previous 4T version)

I decided to listen to one song per day. Today is time for The Who with "Won't Get Fooled Again" and I definitely enjoy it. The length is a surprise, I'm used to song that last for 3-4 minutes, not 8. Some 2T music is stuporous and boring, like some 3T music is chaotic and aggressive. But I was wrong to assume all 2T music is like the music I disliked.

I can tentatively conclude that Boomers will be remembered as musically talented, like Transcendentals are remembered as great poets.

Quote:I see how the word "extropy" relates to "entropy," the 2nd law of thermodynamics used to propose the ultimate run-down of the universe, and how extropy might be an alternative to this supposed destiny. If that's what it means, heartily agree. I believe some people used the word "negentropy" for this, probably based on the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

You've got this right. Negentropy sounds weird though, it's a positive thing so why the "neg" as in "negative".

Ultimate run-down of the universe will happen in about 100 trillion years, so we shouldn't worry about it. The Cosmos is still a child. Most civilizations are yet to be born, and it's likely we are the first to arise, at least in the Milky Way galaxy.

[David Horn]

(03-18-2021, 01:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I see how the word "extropy" relates to "entropy," the 2nd law of thermodynamics used to propose the ultimate run-down of the universe, and how extropy might be an alternative to this supposed destiny. If that's what it means, heartily agree. I believe some people used the word "negentropy" for this, probably based on the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Extropy is not a real word, but it does elicit some respect as a concept.  It stands-in as a product of an open system (e.g. the earth) that gains more energy than it emits.  It's the part of the 2nd law of thermodynamics that the doomsayers avoid discussing. Yes, the universe is a closed system, and entropy applies at that level -- or we assume it does.  There is still the multiverse theory that puts our universe in and even larger context, and hence, an open system as well.

The word was coined to describe, in pseudoscientific terms, how we advance rather than decay.  Who can fault that?

[pbrower2a]

(03-19-2021, 04:03 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:

(03-18-2021, 01:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Ah, so the new incarnation of you has more moderated positions. Very good.

Now, maybe you can begin to see that "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll", as the modern-day version of wine, women and song, has its place too, and I agree that "a civilized person puts other, more complex goals first". I also contend that the 2nd-turning version was better than the 3T version, because it had its high-art "extropy" aspects. These may not be so apparent in the portion that is readily available on mainstream media. That's why I recommend you peruse my list! 
http://philosopherswheel.com/ericrock.html (and brower too; he still prefers the previous 4T version)

I decided to listen to one song per day. Today is time for The Who with "Won't Get Fooled Again" and I definitely enjoy it. The length is a surprise, I'm used to song that last for 3-4 minutes, not 8. Some 2T music is stuporous and boring, like some 3T music is chaotic and aggressive. But I was wrong to assume all 2T music is like the music I disliked.

I can tentatively conclude that Boomers will be remembered as musically talented, like Transcendentals are remembered as great poets.

It's when 2T music became overtly commercial and quit claiming any pretense to intellectual depth or moral improvement (as with Disco) that many Boomers 'grew out' of pop music, going to country, R&B, gospel, folk, jazz, or classical -- depending largely on ideology or proclivity. That was late.  

Quote:

Quote:I see how the word "extropy" relates to "entropy," the 2nd law of thermodynamics used to propose the ultimate run-down of the universe, and how extropy might be an alternative to this supposed destiny. If that's what it means, heartily agree. I believe some people used the word "negentropy" for this, probably based on the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

You've got this right. Negentropy sounds weird though, it's a positive thing so why the "neg" as in "negative".

Ultimate run-down of the universe will happen in about 100 trillion years, so we shouldn't worry about it. The Cosmos is still a child. Most civilizations are yet to be born, and it's likely we are the first to arise, at least in the Milky Way galaxy.

Well before that the sunlight will steadily increase, and even a 5% increase (which has nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming), temperatures will get too hot for warm-blooded life (mammals and birds, especially). Oxygen becomes less soluble in water as temperature increases (paradoxically the polar seas are richer in aquatic life than are tropical waters, which is the inverse of the reality on land, in which terrestrial life becomes scarcer and slower as one goes toward the poles, becomes a thermal desert in the tundra, and becomes a complete desert in the ice sheets), so fish start to perish. Any creatures (seals, dolphins, whales, octopuses, Icelanders, and Norwegians) who rely heavily upon fish for food will be out of luck, to put it mildly. That is when the average world temperature is that of tropical seas, around 30C (86F). Breathing will be harder in thinner, more humid air. Human life as we know it will go extinct as will our cattle, sheep, and dogs. Cats and camels might last a bit longer, but not much.

At some point, such life on Earth that will be possible will be self-replicating, self-repairing robots that can thrive in the hot, humid world that we cannot live in because their metabolism will be electrical current from solar power (which will be intense)... but even that will not last long. The runaway greenhouse begins when the average temperature of the Earth reaches something like 50 C (122F). The highest that I ever experienced was 45C (113F) in Dallas in 1980... and I made grim jokes about who I saw out and about. Characters like Billy the Kid, Al Capone, John Dillinger, Ted Bundy, and eventually the likes of John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Adolf Eichmann, Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo. I was "saving" Stalin for 114F and Hitler for 115F. I wore winter clothes as protection from the brutal sunlight, as Dallas is about as sunny as a hot desert most of the time.

Around 50C the runaway wet greenhouse effect takes effect. Evaporation of water from all sources intensifies, and water is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Mammal, bird, fish, and amphibian life will be gone, and most plant life will be, too. What remains, including bacteria, won't last long. Temperatures will skyrocket, and they will quickly get hotter on Earth than those of Venus because the waters of the seas w8ll have become vapor. Water vapor near the top of the atmosphere will be broken into oxygen and hydrogen, with hydrogen escaping into space. Within about ten million years the Earth will have gone from being a world of struggling life to an inferno in which the surface rocks and any of the flimsy constructions of steel and glass that remain from the human presence start to melt. The iron-and-silicon life that is the self-reproducing and self-repairing robots will themselves go extinct quickly as they too melt.   

Such surviving humans will not be able to say, like "Rick Blaine" (Humphrey Bogart)  and "Ilsa Lund" (Ingrid Bergman) that they "will always have Paris". There will be no more Paris. Or St. Petersburg (Florida or Russia).  There will be no Angel Falls or Grand Canyon either. Maybe some part of Humanity will have relocated, with its cattle, sheep, goats, horses, dogs, and cats, to some newer world at an earlier stage of planetary life and will be thriving. Maybe the cycle continues for a few more generations of stellar development. But that too comes to an end.

[Eric the Green]

(03-19-2021, 04:03 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:

(03-18-2021, 01:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Ah, so the new incarnation of you has more moderated positions. Very good.

Now, maybe you can begin to see that "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll", as the modern-day version of wine, women and song, has its place too, and I agree that "a civilized person puts other, more complex goals first". I also contend that the 2nd-turning version was better than the 3T version, because it had its high-art "extropy" aspects. These may not be so apparent in the portion that is readily available on mainstream media. That's why I recommend you peruse my list! 
http://philosopherswheel.com/ericrock.html (and brower too; he still prefers the previous 4T version)

I decided to listen to one song per day. Today is time for The Who with "Won't Get Fooled Again" and I definitely enjoy it. The length is a surprise, I'm used to song that last for 3-4 minutes, not 8. Some 2T music is stuporous and boring, like some 3T music is chaotic and aggressive. But I was wrong to assume all 2T music is like the music I disliked.

I can tentatively conclude that Boomers will be remembered as musically talented, like Transcendentals are remembered as great poets.

Quote:I see how the word "extropy" relates to "entropy," the 2nd law of thermodynamics used to propose the ultimate run-down of the universe, and how extropy might be an alternative to this supposed destiny. If that's what it means, heartily agree. I believe some people used the word "negentropy" for this, probably based on the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

You've got this right. Negentropy sounds weird though, it's a positive thing so why the "neg" as in "negative".

Ultimate run-down of the universe will happen in about 100 trillion years, so we shouldn't worry about it. The Cosmos is still a child. Most civilizations are yet to be born, and it's likely we are the first to arise, at least in the Milky Way galaxy.

Thanks for checking out the songs. Very cool. It is truly a universe of sounds and songs; even I find more to discover from this era as the years go by. But definitely there's a need to be selective, as with all pop music eras. 

I do worry about what will happen in 100 trillion years; just my hangup I guess. Time passes and catches up with us, even trillions of years later. It will come. I like to think extropy will grow and reverse the entropy trend, and there will be a legacy to all the civilizations in the universe that will never die. And I certainly tend to think we are not the first, and that we have been visited by our forebears. But the evidence for this is so-far not conclusive, so skepticism is understandable. I tend to think the Earth is in a specially-favored place, so we have a special destiny if we seize it. And our growing relationship with "the other side" is another aspect to our destiny. Also, not a field where the evidence is conclusive, but strong.

[Captain Genet]

The newest, tidied up version:

(04-20-2021, 03:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Toward the center the political and cultural figures may differ greatly in ideological premises but recognize the need for essential compromises to achieve practical results that meld even opposing trends. This said, Obama is not the sort who would shed any tears about someone like Rajneesh going to prison for poisoning a buffet. We have seen the sparks fly between Merkel and Trump even if both are more on the pro-business axis, and it is safe to assume that although Walesa is a nationalist as was Hitler, Walesa has no problems with what Polish Communists did to Nazi perpetrators of genocide.      

In general, if one truly believes in "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", one is safest to go toward the center, whose ideology is murkier and for whom pragmatism prevails.

Yes, the kind of civilized life normal people value is safest in the centre. Theocracy is potentially the noblest of the sectors but it ultimately fails because spiritual leaders lose their spiritual qualities when they assume political power. 

Moderates of any sector do not hesitate to condemn their extremists. GW Bush spoke against the Capitol attack on January 6. And moderate proletarianists like Rosa Luxemburg were the first to speak against the Soviet atrocities.

Quote:...There are people missing, and I have seen  other circles in which such people as Vladimir Lenin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud, George Orwell, Donald Trump, Sir Winston Churchill, Simon Bolivar, Gregor and Otto Strasser (Nazis who wanted emphasis on the "socialist" pretensions of Nazism instead of compromises with the tycoons and big landowners), Mao Zedong, Mohandas Gandhi, and Robert Mugabe.  It might be difficult to place such lunatic leaders as Idi Amin or Ivan the Terrible.  Where does one put figures of antiquity such as Tutankhamun, Alexander,  Shi Huang Ti (brutal and repressive Chinese emperor that Mao admired), Moses, Zoroaster, Caesar, Lao-Tse, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad?

We had this discussion before, but:
-Lenin would be in the same place I put Stalin. There were hardly any differences between the two, save matters of tactics.
-George Orwell, a moderate proletarianist?
-Donald Trump is simultaneously a libertarian and a nationalist. A weird combination, but it makes sense as far as both selfishness and tribalism are seen as macho traits. The whole neoreaction and manosphere are this sort of hybrid and I cannot place them properly. 
-The Strasser bros are in the same place I put Saddam. National socialism with the emphasis on socialism.
-Mao probably the same, he was too focused on Chinese nationalism to be a true proletarianist (aka Marxist)
-Lao-Tse, Gautama Buddha and Jesus were not primarily political figures, so they are out of scope
-Mohammed... You know that Osama bin Laden keenly imitated his prophet? We are dealing with pure theocracy there.

Eric once asked about transhumanism and AI. I think AIs are an ultracapitalist concept, they would be economically productive 24/7 without having to sleep or have fun, an indeed most AI enthusiasts like Max Moore are libertarians. Transhumanism is more inclusivist. The counterculture wanted to liberate Self from tradition and social obligations, now transhumanism wants to liberate it from nature's limits. Look at seminal transhumanist works like "Last and First Men" and you see a literally bohemian world, a California on steroids, despite pseudo-Christian rants about "spiritual values". I'm happy to report that I've dumped this book and transhumanism in general.

Quote:I do not know where I would place myself. I respect tradition as a fallback when things go haywire, but I can't quite place which tradition is definitively right. We are far better off with competitive enterprise than with giant entities who buy off smart people with little talent and buy politicians like Ron Johnson. Like the theocrats I see vice as human degradation instead of privilege.  I dissent with people who think that life is all about the money, as the most extreme exemplars of that attitude are gangsters such as one finds in the Sicilian and Neapolitan Mafia, the Russian Mafiya, the Chinese Triads, the Yakuza, and the leaders of Latin-American drug cartels.

Note well: part of the American tradition is the defense of old Constitutional norms.

I really agree with all of that. I would place myself in the place I put Tolstoy, despite not agreeing with his pacifism. Military intervention against tyranny is still a good thing, but I see Tolstoy's point in a world dominated by absolute monarchies fighting to enlarge their territory.

[pbrower2a]

Just to be clear about something: "Chavez" is Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan socialist demagogue turned dictator and not American labor leader Cesar Chavez, conservative activist Linda Chavez, or Mexican composer (he is very good) Carlos Chavez.

Putting Anton Szandor LaVey where you did is telling. I see him as the ultimate promoter of destructive vice (drugs and the sexual revolution) which can kill and, through neglect of children can foster dangerous sociopaths. If ideas have potential for mass death, if indirectly through consequences, then LaVey is toward the extreme counterclockwise zone of libertarianism.

[Eric the Green]

Good revisions. As I mentioned I see the original political circle as adequate, since nationalism and theocracy are just two aspects of social conservatism, and overlap more often than not. The Libertarian quadrant is the economic conservative quadrant, and in most versions, such as neo-liberalism, it has completely lost the original liberal ideals, which are still held by the inclusivists.

I like the understanding that political circles bring to the scene.

[pbrower2a]

With Saddam Hussein we have someone like Pierre Laval who went from being a socialist with nationalist tendencies to a full-blown fascist. It is no wonder that Gorbachev could sell him out. Not that that wasn't right. Hitlerite fascism sees only one morality -- the Nation, which excuses any crime in its name. I can think of some renegade socialists and even Communists (Laval of course, Quisling, Mussolini, Pavolini, Doriot, perhaps Goebbels, and the mercifully-obscure D.C. Stephenson). D. C. Stephenson? He was the charismatic leader of the Indiana KKK in the 1920's... and I could make the case that the Second Klan (1915) had many of the characteristics of Nazism and Fascism before those monstrous causes came into existence. Even the stiff-arm salute (if with the "wrong" arm for Nazism and fascism) is do not know whether a KKK innovation from 1915.Except for the added hatred of Catholics the Klan had much the same hatreds.

OK... I have a couple of early-modern figures to suggest for placement: Cromwell and William of Orange.