We're WEIRD. Get over it.

[Eric the Green]

It's a good song; I know it well. Right now though, the tribalists and the apologists and apostles of greed are in the driver's seat, and are likely to create a supreme court that will keep them able to squash the WEIRD and all the advanced versions of it such as green and new age weirdness. Biden may win, and the Democrats may take the senate, but will they be ruthless enough for the fight before then, and after then?

I am not so sure we will make progress in this 4T, or make it through this crisis and remove some of the problems. It looks to me like the same old stalemate and decay for another 30 years, unless the Democrats suddenly grow a backbone and realize that we are indeed in a war, and prepare for battle, whether this is a cold or a hot civil war. Normal, enlightened, legislative advances in the information age have been blocked practically since the information age itself dawned in the 60s and 70s. There have been no legislative solutions you mention that are holding and lasting. All are being reversed, and what hasn't been reversed yet, will be soon, or be caught up in the stalemate indefinitely.

Not feeling optimistic tonight at all. I may have to take back all of what I have written up until now. Justice Ginsburg not being able to hold on totally messes up the trajectory of this 4T. I may have to write a dystopian version of my previous two prophetic books.

And no, I dissent from any defense of those rightwing Republican appointees on the Court.

[sbarrera]

(09-21-2020, 12:51 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Over on the Generational Dynamics thread a few weeks ago I had a skirmish over the song You Have to be Carefully Taught with Xenakis.  Among other things, Xenakis wound up doing his usual character assasination on the character of Emile, who in some versions of the musical sings the song in question.

It seems more relevant now.  The song expresses a principle, an ideal, that all men should be treated equally.  In the musical, it was the question of whether you could love someone who had loved outside his group.  The idea of equality is a WEIRD idea.  The approach being replaced is tribalism.  Those in your kin group or tribe have many relationships and obligations to one another, seek to advance the kin group, to try to exclude others.  If Henrich is correct, most of the world’s cultures were tribal.  That was the norm in the Agricultural Age and hunter gatherer societies.  The recent advance in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies which I have represented here as whig includes fighting racism / tribalism.  It used to be the norm.  We are struggling to make it not the norm, principle above a tradition of tribalism.

It has to be carefully taught?  Is that true or the WEIRD result of Rodgers and Hammerstein being well educated Americans?

Strauss and Howe originally presented turning theory as being non partisan, as not being liked to what has become the red blue divide.  I was and remain dubious.  It is the Cousin’s Wars continued.  It is stepping out of the Agricultural Age into first the Industrial Age then the Information Age.  It is about guns, germs and steel.  It is about becoming more WIERD.  It is about all of the above.  After each crisis, the greatest problems in the culture are removed.  This implies progress.  It gives an advantage in the crisis to the progressives.

And if you are for the blue and against racism and for progress, then the theory of WIERD becomes partisan.  Can a principle oriented person set aside his principles and let a tribal racist remain a racist?  Must the progress towards an ever more WIERD society falter on an old tendency to become ever more loyal to one’s own?

I’m more convinced than ever that the red blue divide is the latest chapter in a much longer battle over the WIERD.

Bob, you seem to be saying that W.E.I.R.D. = blue zone. So what happens if the red zone takes over in 2021? Is that the end of the West?

[Eric the Green]

I remember what Kenneth Clark said in Civilization in 1968, even at the start of the stalemate, and already he said, after describing the climax of The Age of Reason in the episode entitled "The Smile of Reason," with scenes and comments on the founding of the USA and Washington DC: "A peaceful looking scene; a great ideal made visible. But beyond it! What problems. Almost insolvable. Or, at least not solvable by the Smile of Reason!"

I'm afraid those whig values and achievements are not enough to move the human spirit and keep a nation alive. And after 52 years, the problems are not more solvable now, and in fact much less so. It will take a Revolution, just like what happened in a later episode of Clark's series, and perhaps that is unlikely to succeed, with new bosses being no better than the old, or else never able to win. And so yet another civilization enters a period of decay, just as Europe did. Indeed, the episode about the French/European Revolution in Clark's series was called "The Fallacies of Hope." "We're used to all this now. We're almost numbed by repeated disappointments," he wrote in 1968!

[Bob Butler 54]

(09-22-2020, 12:02 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Bob, you seem to be saying that W.E.I.R.D. = blue zone. So what happens if the red zone takes over in 2021? Is that the end of the West?

As usual, things will get worse until it is decided to do something about it.  Trump being reelected is pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.  As Churchill allegedly said, America will eventually do the right thing, once they have tried everything else.  He did not mention doing a wrong thing twice.

I don't think a population to try to keep an unravelling going, to keep operating on the values of selfishness once the problems have surfaced.  I suspect the Democrats will triumph.  You are correct to worry, though.

[pbrower2a]

(09-22-2020, 12:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-22-2020, 12:02 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Bob, you seem to be saying that W.E.I.R.D. = blue zone. So what happens if the red zone takes over in 2021? Is that the end of the West?

As usual, things will get worse until it is decided to do something about it.  Trump being reelected is pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.  As Churchill allegedly said, America will eventually do the right thing, once they have tried everything else.  He did not mention doing a wrong thing twice.

Quote:It's hard to see Trump as an iteration of any prior US President. I see him more like Rafael Trujillo or Slobodan Milosevic. We always have the possibility of replicating to a large extent the Crisis that some other country had. I saw the regional and sectarian polarization of America in the 1990's and saw an unwelcome parallel in Spain in the 1930's. That, a political order that bounds from Left to Right before one side becomes able to win a military struggle against the other and impose its way in victory for an indefinite time is becoming less likely each year. 

His debasement of the language of political discourse is Newspeak without a clear program. His economics is neoliberalism taken to its preposterous conclusion: mirror-image Marxism that I call "Sadonomics". He is an incredibly vile person; not long ago the sort of things that he says you would be expected to take home if you brought him to an Elks Club or Moose Lodge. By the time most of us were teenagers most of us knew enough to not ridicule the handicapped. When I was a child, the fellow in a wheelchair might have lost his legs at Guadalcanal or Bastogne as one of those "suckers", "losers", and "dopes" who did his duty to keep America from coming under the rule of Hitler or Tojo. Most of us could put together a historical reality that included ourselves going to war and getting crippled in the protection of our Republic. "Grab her by the..."? Yes, I would vote to convict some thuggish young man who did that to some female without her consent in a jury trial in Michigan for "criminal sexual conduct".  

Quote:I don't think a population to try to keep an unravelling going, to keep operating on the values of selfishness once the problems have surfaced.  I suspect the Democrats will triumph.  You are correct to worry, though.

Unraveling eras typically collapse in economic meltdowns or wars. We did get the economic meltdown, but Obama at least did what Keynes prescribed as a solution. The problem is that we as a people learned nothing. If Trump cannot do right with an epidemic despite the resources obviously available in America, then I can only wonder how he would do in an economic meltdown or a war. I can see Donald Trump as the worst sort of leader short of a fascist butcher in a big war, using the war to glorify himself and enrich his cronies while he treats the "dopes", "losers", and "suckers" who believe in something nobler than he is, like the principles upon which this country was founded or on principles that are obvious corollaries as cannon fodder i a war that he would bungle. Neither Lincoln nor FDR liked war, but they got it. They ended up seeing victory as the only way to peace, and they saw decent treatment of the defeated as a way to keep the peace.

I look at America's young adults, and I largely see people sick of Unraveling ways. They recognize that those ways hurt themselves and their children.  

[David Horn]

(09-20-2020, 01:39 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-20-2020, 01:00 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-19-2020, 11:11 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It goes in spades to the Middle East.  Groups with like associations of tribe, region, religion and so forth will strive against other similar groups.

Of course, tribe, region, and sect are effective means of organizing society, and if one has no social organization, then WIERD ways will never have a way to form. Some people need those.

Tribal organization would definitely make sense in continuing and exaggerating the tribe's genes.  It was cost effective from Darwin's perspective for a long time.  Changing the group's mental makeup to value working with people with similar skills, reading, principle and culture is turning out to be more cost effective though.  The human race is drifting in the direction of WEIRD.

Some people need their tribes, though.  Loyalty to the group can be deeply ingrained, a way of thinking, stubborn to say the least.

Caution is in order though.  Rarely is anything or anyone all this or that.  For example, some members of the Red culture are quite urbane and well read, but have an emotional link to conservative thought patterns. Here in the South, that may be due to upbringing, and tempered but not totally overcome by life experience.  I can think of any number of examples within my social sphere.  Others are more as you described them.  The latter group is locked into that thinking; the former is more open to suasion of one form or another.

Ii think a lot of it is due to individual personality.  People interested in ideas have to be open. People only open to experiences can be less so.  People not open to either are locked into their respective mindsets, and more or less impervious to outside forces.

[Bob Butler 54]

(09-22-2020, 12:27 PM)David Horn Wrote: Caution is in order though.  Rarely is anything or anyone all this or that.  For example, some members of the Red culture are quite urbane and well read, but have an emotional link to conservative thought patterns. Here in the South, that may be due to upbringing, and tempered but not totally overcome by life experience.  I can think of any number of examples within my social sphere.  Others are more as you described them.  The latter group is locked into that thinking; the former is more open to suasion of one form or another.

Ii think a lot of it is due to individual personality.  People interested in ideas have to be open. People only open to experiences can be less so.  People not open to either are locked into their respective mindsets, and more or less impervious to outside forces.

A fair warning.  Thing is, turning theory has four archetypes, more if you distinguish cusps and between red and blue boomers.  There are a lot of people, all of which are individuals.  You hardly prejudge people by their age, or at least I don't and I don't recommend it.  Still, there is enough truth in it in aggregate about how large groups behave that the theory is illuminating.

WEIRD theory only has two archetypes: WIERD and tribal.  They would have much the same feel, more true in the general aggregate than as to apply to individuals, but it helps one understand the difference between the two cultures.  While I generally reserve turning theory for abstract arguments, WEIRD encourages some of it's stronger adherents to be viewed by the stereotypes.  Like, they can't seem to put the tribal thinking away.  I suspect it is much the same for us WIERD folks overall as the generational stereotypes.  When red folks complain about the blue forcing them to comply to various ideals, we are probably being WEIRD.

Perhaps I am just over reacting to the initial integration of a theory.  For a while I usually get obsessed with the new pattern being integrated.

[David Horn]

(09-23-2020, 06:14 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Perhaps I am just over reacting to the initial integration of a theory.  For a while I usually get obsessed with the new pattern being integrated.

No, I think it's more a case of finding the right fit -- a practice I try to follow too.  Some people and some situations fit stereotypes almost perfectly, and others don't.  I think that's normal.  Finding aggregates is a bit harder.  That's always been my issue with S&H, since the typical follower of the theory tends to think of archetypes as definitive sets.  Every generation has it's outliers and would be dull and boring if it didn't.  I think some have a preponderance of non-standard archetypes -- enough to mute the effect of the supposed dominant one.  Now is not one of those times.  I believe the Millies are finally finding their collective footing, and the Civics are unusually common as the dominant archetype.  On the WEIRD scale, that should also indicate WEIRD dominance too.

[Classic-Xer]

(09-23-2020, 06:14 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-22-2020, 12:27 PM)David Horn Wrote: Caution is in order though.  Rarely is anything or anyone all this or that.  For example, some members of the Red culture are quite urbane and well read, but have an emotional link to conservative thought patterns. Here in the South, that may be due to upbringing, and tempered but not totally overcome by life experience.  I can think of any number of examples within my social sphere.  Others are more as you described them.  The latter group is locked into that thinking; the former is more open to suasion of one form or another.

Ii think a lot of it is due to individual personality.  People interested in ideas have to be open. People only open to experiences can be less so.  People not open to either are locked into their respective mindsets, and more or less impervious to outside forces.

WEIRD theory only has two archetypes: WIERD and tribal.  They would have much the same feel, more true in the general aggregate than as to apply to individuals, but it helps one understand the difference between the two cultures.  While I generally reserve turning theory for abstract arguments, WEIRD encourages some of it's stronger adherents to be viewed by the stereotypes.  Like, they can't seem to put the tribal thinking away.  I suspect it is much the same for us WIERD folks overall as the generational stereotypes.  When red folks complain about the blue forcing them to comply to various ideals, we are probably being WEIRD.

Perhaps I am just over reacting to the initial integration of a theory.  For a while I usually get obsessed with the new pattern being integrated.

Aren't the Weird a tribe? You talk like they are "I suspect it is much the same for us Weird folks" but you don't seem to view them (yourself) as tribal for some Weird reason ( like you don't understand what your doing or saying as you're doing it) which makes you Weird compared to a Normal member of a Normal tribe.

[David Horn]

(09-24-2020, 02:07 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-23-2020, 06:14 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-22-2020, 12:27 PM)David Horn Wrote: Caution is in order though.  Rarely is anything or anyone all this or that.  For example, some members of the Red culture are quite urbane and well read, but have an emotional link to conservative thought patterns. Here in the South, that may be due to upbringing, and tempered but not totally overcome by life experience.  I can think of any number of examples within my social sphere.  Others are more as you described them.  The latter group is locked into that thinking; the former is more open to suasion of one form or another.

Ii think a lot of it is due to individual personality.  People interested in ideas have to be open. People only open to experiences can be less so.  People not open to either are locked into their respective mindsets, and more or less impervious to outside forces.

WEIRD theory only has two archetypes: WIERD and tribal.  They would have much the same feel, more true in the general aggregate than as to apply to individuals, but it helps one understand the difference between the two cultures.  While I generally reserve turning theory for abstract arguments, WEIRD encourages some of it's stronger adherents to be viewed by the stereotypes.  Like, they can't seem to put the tribal thinking away.  I suspect it is much the same for us WIERD folks overall as the generational stereotypes.  When red folks complain about the blue forcing them to comply to various ideals, we are probably being WEIRD.

Perhaps I am just over reacting to the initial integration of a theory.  For a while I usually get obsessed with the new pattern being integrated.

Aren't the Weird a tribe? You talk like they are "I suspect it is much the same for us Weird folks" but you don't seem to view them (yourself) as tribal for some Weird reason ( like you don't understand what your doing or saying as you're doing it) which makes you Weird compared to a Normal member of a Normal tribe.

That's a legitimate observation, but the point of being WEIRD is to be anti-tribal, assuming that's even possible.  So no, the WEIRD are unlike the non-WEIRD: like the difference between cats and dogs.

[Bob Butler 54]

(09-24-2020, 02:07 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Aren't the Weird a tribe? You talk like they are "I suspect it is much the same for us Weird folks" but you don't seem to view them (yourself) as tribal for some Weird reason ( like you don't understand what your doing or saying as you're doing it) which makes you Weird compared to a Normal member of a Normal tribe.

The WEIRD patten includes changing the brain.  The two halves communicate with one another better.  One becomes measurably better at recognizing the abstract, worse at recognizing people and relationships.  You can tell the difference with an electrocardiogram, not just in which flag turns you on.  You don't see a similar difference if you are tribal but clearly belong to a different tribe.  You should become familiar with the sort of psychological test used to distinguish between the two patterns.

I could see there being a similar difference, say, between hunter gatherers and farmers.  The difference could conceivably stress or exercise different portions of the brain, cause a different wiring.  Just a wild guess.

But, yes, there would be a cat and dog difference.

There would have been WIERD people in antiquity.  There were scribes back in the old days, learning the brain altering skills.  They just would be vastly in the minority, a smaller part of the population.  In many cultures, the difference might be in the priests and some bureaucrats being WIERD but most people tribal.  A distinction between nobles striving for a group's power advantage against the church's fighting for the ideal of peace could echo the modern tension.   The Protestant's thinking that everybody should read the Bible, that the common man should not trust the elites to interpret one's relationship with God, was a big key.

You should really read the book, learn of what you speak.

[pbrower2a]

(09-24-2020, 02:07 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-23-2020, 06:14 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-22-2020, 12:27 PM)David Horn Wrote: Caution is in order though.  Rarely is anything or anyone all this or that.  For example, some members of the Red culture are quite urbane and well read, but have an emotional link to conservative thought patterns. Here in the South, that may be due to upbringing, and tempered but not totally overcome by life experience.  I can think of any number of examples within my social sphere.  Others are more as you described them.  The latter group is locked into that thinking; the former is more open to suasion of one form or another.

Ii think a lot of it is due to individual personality.  People interested in ideas have to be open. People only open to experiences can be less so.  People not open to either are locked into their respective mindsets, and more or less impervious to outside forces.

WEIRD theory only has two archetypes: WIERD and tribal.  They would have much the same feel, more true in the general aggregate than as to apply to individuals, but it helps one understand the difference between the two cultures.  While I generally reserve turning theory for abstract arguments, WEIRD encourages some of it's stronger adherents to be viewed by the stereotypes.  Like, they can't seem to put the tribal thinking away.  I suspect it is much the same for us WIERD folks overall as the generational stereotypes.  When red folks complain about the blue forcing them to comply to various ideals, we are probably being WEIRD.

Perhaps I am just over reacting to the initial integration of a theory.  For a while I usually get obsessed with the new pattern being integrated.

Aren't the Weird a tribe? You talk like they are "I suspect it is much the same for us Weird folks" but you don't seem to view them (yourself) as tribal for some Weird reason ( like you don't understand what your doing or saying as you're doing it) which makes you Weird compared to a Normal member of a Normal tribe.

No. It is a way of thinking. Occupational groups may have their characteristics that cross other lines. A Nigerian engineer may have much in common with a Japanese engineer than with a Nigerian peasant. I'm not saying that engineers as a group are particularly WIERD, as WIERD people are appearing in all places on the globe. 

Another: people with high IQ's have generally much more in common with each other than with people with low IQ's. The two types get along almost as a rule only in stereotyped situations. Someone of low intelligence might bring up how fun it is to put a lighted firecracker up the anus of a frog and watch the frog disintegrate as the firecracker explodes, which completely offends the sensibilities of smart people who consider such pointless. On the other hand, smart people might discuss the evolution of frogs in the way that someone of low-normal intelligence could never fully understand.

WIERD people are more accepting of national and cultural differences. 

There is no such thing as a tribe of "normal" people. Tribes suggest intolerance of people normal in different ways due to the milieus in which they are raised.

[Bob Butler 54]

(09-24-2020, 05:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: No. It is a way of thinking. Occupational groups may have their characteristics that cross other lines. A Nigerian engineer may have much in common with a Japanese engineer than with a Nigerian peasant. I'm not saying that engineers as a group are particularly WIERD, as WIERD people are appearing in all places on the globe.

I would not be surprised to learn that engineers do tend to be WIERD.  Engineers tend to be literate, educated and urban.  Farmers would tend to be more tribal and rural.

[Classic-Xer]

(09-24-2020, 05:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: No. It is a way of thinking. Occupational groups may have their characteristics that cross other lines. A Nigerian engineer may have much in common with a Japanese engineer than with a Nigerian peasant. I'm not saying that engineers as a group are particularly WIERD, as WIERD people are appearing in all places on the globe. 

Another: people with high IQ's have generally much more in common with each other than with people with low IQ's. The two types get along almost as a rule only in stereotyped situations. Someone of low intelligence might bring up how fun it is to put a lighted firecracker up the anus of a frog and watch the frog disintegrate as the firecracker explodes, which completely offends the sensibilities of smart people who consider such pointless. On the other hand, smart people might discuss the evolution of frogs in the way that someone of low-normal intelligence could never fully understand.

WIERD people are more accepting of national and cultural differences. 

There is no such thing as a tribe of "normal" people. Tribes suggest intolerance of people normal in different ways due to the milieus in which they are raised.

Weird is a way of thinking to you?

[Classic-Xer]

(09-21-2020, 11:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It's a good song; I know it well. Right now though, the tribalists and the apologists and apostles of greed are in the driver's seat, and are likely to create a supreme court that will keep them able to squash the WEIRD and all the advanced versions of it such as green and new age weirdness. Biden may win, and the Democrats may take the senate, but will they be ruthless enough for the fight before then, and after then?

I am not so sure we will make progress in this 4T, or make it through this crisis and remove some of the problems. It looks to me like the same old stalemate and decay for another 30 years, unless the Democrats suddenly grow a backbone and realize that we are indeed in a war, and prepare for battle, whether this is a cold or a hot civil war. Normal, enlightened, legislative advances in the information age have been blocked practically since the information age itself dawned in the 60s and 70s. There have been no legislative solutions you mention that are holding and lasting. All are being reversed, and what hasn't been reversed yet, will be soon, or be caught up in the stalemate indefinitely.

Not feeling optimistic tonight at all. I may have to take back all of what I have written up until now. Justice Ginsburg not being able to hold on totally messes up the trajectory of this 4T. I may have to write a dystopian version of my previous two prophetic books.

And no, I dissent from any defense of those rightwing Republican appointees on the Court.

I'm sure we'll see more Liberal related violence and see more innocent peoples lives being ruined by it as well but that ain't going to change the outcome or save your pretty boy governor either.

[Bob Butler 54]

(09-25-2020, 01:05 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm sure we'll see more Liberal related violence and see more innocent peoples lives being ruined by it as well but that ain't going to change the outcome or save your pretty boy governor either.

And that would be an example of tribal thinking.  A tendency to use violence against members of other tribes.  A tendency to not see red violence, to not recognize or even understand the ideal of non violence.  An assignment of parody motivations to the other tribe.  Thinking tribally, there will always be someone of another tribe to hate.  You divide into your tribe and others and hate the others.  

As long as you identify with those you call Americans and hate everyone else, you are in the trap.

It was once cost effective.  You spread your own tribes genes at the expense of everybody else.  Somewhere between the inventions of the machine gun and the nuke, it became much less cost effective.  Remnants do persist.

[pbrower2a]

(09-25-2020, 12:47 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(09-24-2020, 05:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: No. It is a way of thinking. Occupational groups may have their characteristics that cross other lines. A Nigerian engineer may have much in common with a Japanese engineer than with a Nigerian peasant. I'm not saying that engineers as a group are particularly WIERD, as WIERD people are appearing in all places on the globe. 

Another: people with high IQ's have generally much more in common with each other than with people with low IQ's. The two types get along almost as a rule only in stereotyped situations. Someone of low intelligence might bring up how fun it is to put a lighted firecracker up the anus of a frog and watch the frog disintegrate as the firecracker explodes, which completely offends the sensibilities of smart people who consider such pointless. On the other hand, smart people might discuss the evolution of frogs in the way that someone of low-normal intelligence could never fully understand.

WIERD people are more accepting of national and cultural differences. 

There is no such thing as a tribe of "normal" people. Tribes suggest intolerance of people normal in different ways due to the milieus in which they are raised.

Weird is a way of thinking to you?

In Roman times, a smart person was literally someone who could read (legere) between (inter) the lines. Such is the source of such words as intelligent, intellect, and intellectual in English and other languages whose technical words come largely from Latin. The word intelligentsia applies in some countries to the class that lives on its ability to think instead of upon toil or ownership of assets. Although literacy was scarce in Roman times, any blockhead could read a written language very close to the spoken language (when people spoke Classical Latin). Making sense of what one read, judging what is written for its logical validity and factual reality, and recognizing bosh for what it is isn't so easy.  As we all know, exploitative and repressive regimes prefer that people simply accept what they read from official notices as the unvarnished truth, and the people who can read between the lines are potential troublemakers instead of agents of positive change or exemplars of conscience. 

Today we Americans often speak of thinking outside the box as a good way to avoid getting stuck in ossified ways of doing business, politics, or creative activities. Thinking outside the box is WEIRD, and to people committed to old ways (economic interest? lack of imagination? fear of the unknown?) such is simply weird. This said, some people would never consider listening to music with such a generic title as Piano Sonata No. 31 in A♭ major, Op. 110 (Ludwig van Beethoven) when one can instead listen to some even-more-generic music of predictable content devoid of any intellectual challenge. Some politicians are successful by telling voters exactly what those voters what they want to hear -- even if such is wrong. I could make the case that JC Penney made a huge mistake by closing small stores that were profitable (for selling inexpensive clothes in large quantities to middle-class shoppers) because such stores were 'cannibalizing' sales at the more grand mall anchors. JC Penney might not be in such a dire position had it kept those small stores in operation as the shopping-mall activity slowed.

Do all WEIRD acts work? No. Wise people often must experiment to sort out success from failure. One wrong note spoils a great piece of music, whether the composer or the performer is culpable. Edison saw wires lighted up and went through numerous trials before coming up with the right material for a filament, the right way to make that filament glow in a useful way, the right enclosure, and the right atmosphere (or a near-vacuum). Successful WEIRD people sort the successes from the failures and offer the successes. .   

  

[Classic-Xer]

(09-25-2020, 01:40 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-25-2020, 01:05 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm sure we'll see more Liberal related violence and see more innocent peoples lives being ruined by it as well but that ain't going to change the outcome or save your pretty boy governor either.

And that would be an example of tribal thinking.  A tendency to use violence against members of other tribes.  A tendency to not see red violence, to not recognize or even understand the ideal of non violence.  An assignment of parody motivations to the other tribe.  Thinking tribally, there will always be someone of another tribe to hate.  You divide into your tribe and others and hate the others.  

As long as you identify with those you call Americans and hate everyone else, you are in the trap.

It was once cost effective.  You spread your own tribes genes at the expense of everybody else.  Somewhere between the inventions of the machine gun and the nuke, it became much less cost effective.  Remnants do persist.

I assume that you're not seeing, paying as much attention or becoming more aware of the blue violence that the rest of the country has been seeing and watching on a regular basis for months these days. The same stupid shit, night after night, month after month. I assume you are able to associate what they're doing with tribal thinking but you seem to be unaware that what you're doing and saying which is similar what they're thinking/believing and using as an excuse or justification of what they're doing and attracting the interest of a large portion of the country that still believes in the age old American concept of might makes right and the idea of using American force to establish order and make things right again for most of the country. You're still a member of the blue tribe right. You're a Weird member but you're still a loyal member of the blue tribe right. Eric can let go of the blue tribe and pledge allegiance to the green tribe because Eric has dual citizenship.

[Bob Butler 54]

(09-25-2020, 09:25 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I assume you are able to associate what they're doing with tribal thinking but you seem to be unaware that what you're doing and saying which is similar what they're thinking/believing and using as an excuse or justification of what they're doing and attracting the interest of a large portion of the country that still believes in the age old American concept of might makes right and the idea of using American  force to establish order and make things right again for most of the country.

There is a distinction between 'all men are equal under law' and 'might makes right'.  The right to murder minorities must be tempered by a movement towards democracy, human rights, equality and justice.  A large part of the country may think it is OK to use might to maintain control.  A large part does not.

Various book looks at the basic divide from different angles.  You get The Cousin's Wars talking about the roundhead and cavalier cultures settling in different parts of the country, initiating the divide between rural racists and urban democracy that persists to this day.  You get Guns, Germs and Steel identifying some of the forces that put the WIERD culture in control.  You have The WIERDest People in the World looking at the difference in mental structure between the two.

In combination, these books show how a given way of perceiving things is slowly overcoming another.  It shows how one civilization at a time, one fourth turning at a time, we are shifting from an Agricultural Age might makes right tribal perspective to a principled democratic one.

You think this time around the trend will be broken?  This time the might makes right tribal Agricultural Age brutal approach will start making a comeback?  I don't think so.  In the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the American Civil War and World War II, the might makes right brutal faction, thinking themselves so great in conflict and violence to have the advantage, has gone head to head with the WEIRD and lost.

I know you and your 'Americans' think your tribal approach to keeping the oppressed down are impressed by yourselves, but the direction of history is not in your favor.  Might makes right?  Think again which side is mighty.

[pbrower2a]

(09-22-2020, 12:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-22-2020, 12:02 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Bob, you seem to be saying that W.E.I.R.D. = blue zone. So what happens if the red zone takes over in 2021? Is that the end of the West?

As usual, things will get worse until it is decided to do something about it.  Trump being reelected is pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.  As Churchill allegedly said, America will eventually do the right thing, once they have tried everything else.  He did not mention doing a wrong thing twice.

I don't think a population to try to keep an unravelling going, to keep operating on the values of selfishness once the problems have surfaced.  I suspect the Democrats will triumph.  You are correct to worry, though.

The Hard Right has no intellectual appeal, whether it is the neo-Nazis or KKK types who drip with genocidal talk or Donald Trump's anti-intellectual followers. Marxism-Leninism still had some claim (however specious) to have an innovative program for restructuring the social order of all capitalist countries. That is over. Marxism-Leninism ossified quickly into an excuse for a bureaucratic elite, the nomenklatura, as oppressive and rapacious as aristocratic landowners People are coming to realize that concentration of power is itself inimical to democracy and  that the concentration of power is itself a source of inequality for its own sake. It may be that a nation of shopkeepers and yeoman farmers can better achieve and protect freedom than what we have now.  

The Corporate Right has its idea of freedom -- freedom to monopolize, to drive small-scale business out of business through buy-outs or ruin, to buy into the political process (government effectively obliged to serve wealth and bureaucratic power instead of the People), and to slough off responsibilities while imposing quasi-feudal duties upon the common man. Such at its worst is high-tech feudalism most closely imitated in Nazi Germany. Even without the genocide and aggressive warfare, Nazi Germany was a worker's Hell.