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Topic	Riots everywhere, WTF is going on around here (Netherlands, for clarity)
ParanoidObsessive 01/25/21 11:18:13 AM #17:	shadowsword87 posted... Yeah that feels like "old man yells at clouds". It's more like "Young gay Israeli man yells at clouds". And then he pulls a Sunny and suggests we should all learn to meditate before the Singularity turns us all into cyborgs. BUT! shadowsword87 posted... People weren't suddenly more pure and wholesome before we could talk to someone 500 miles away, people have always gotten angry and riot-y, and then things changed. It's a cycle of the world, the internet hasn't changed that fact, just made it more noticeable Nah, his view way more complicated than that. And you're actually kind of agreeing with him without knowing it. His theory is basically that, because humans see the world in stories (and we basically do, this has been a thing sociologists figured out a while ago), we feel most comfortable when we have a single defining story that explains how things are "supposed" to work. For most of human history you can kind of point to the dominant paradigm (whether religion, or the concept of nobility/royalty being better than the masses, etc) and know how most people are defining the universe and their place in it. It's not always the SAME story, but there usually IS one. When a given story "fails" (ie, events in the world call that story into question, because the story can no longer explain why things are happening, or because a new story has come into being that seems to explain things better), that story essentially "dies", and is replaced by a new one. So most of human history is basically one long chain of humans in different places and times shifting from one story to another. Conflict occurs when two contradictory stories overlap and fight for dominance, chaos occurs when a story collapses with no alternative to replace it. (A similar theory is actually sort of discussed in Tamim Ansary's book "The Invention of Yesterday", where he discusses the dominant paradigms of various historical regions, how conflict occurred when they would butt up against neighboring paradigms, and how they would ultimately either replace each other or or "blesh" - blend/mesh - into a new paradigm, and why some paradigms could easily move into some places while seeming being antithetical to others.) Harari's theory is essentially that the 20th century was dominated by three major stories (nationalism/fascism, communism/socialism, and capitalism/liberalism). WWII sort of killed the allure of fascism for most people, and the fall of the USSR did the same for communism. Which mostly left "liberalism" as the dominant global paradigm. But over the last decade or so faith in that has waned as well (he draws the line back to the financial crisis of 2008, but there's probably other potential causes as well - which includes the fact that the rapid growth of technology and inter-connectedness isn't necessarily handled well-enough by existing ideological models, so the overwhelming glut of information is leading to disillusionment), so people are sort of left without any comforting fiction or narrative to believe in. In essence, we're a bunch of children panicking and drowning in existential terror. He points to things like Brexit and Donald Trump getting elected as symptoms of that decline, as people feel more and more helpless and lost in a world they thought they understood. I'd go farther to say that it could easily explain riots as well (especially when you factor in the increased hysteria generated by a year-long pandemic lockdown), and if we really want to feel saucy, we could pull things like identity politics and "the culture war" into the mix (because that's literally people who feel alienated with how they see the world desperately trying to redefine their place in it). Not saying that it's 100% the answer to everything, but it's an interesting theory to consider. Especially if we're trying to understand why everyone seems to be going a bit batshit crazy lately. Doubly so because, if anyone ever wants to FIX things, you sort of need to understand why/how those things are broken in the first place. Short-term quick-fix solutions that address symptoms rather than underlying causes rarely ever solve anything at all. --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family <cite>ParanoidObsessive posted [p:949900238] in Riots ever... [t:79258011]...</cite> <quote><cite>shadowsword87 posted...</cite> <quote>Yeah that feels like "old man yells at clouds".</quote> It's more like "Young gay Israeli man yells at clouds". And then he pulls a Sunny and suggests we should all learn to meditate before the Singularity turns us all into cyborgs. BUT! <cite>shadowsword87 posted...</cite> <quote>People weren't suddenly more pure and wholesome before we could talk to someone 500 miles away, people have always gotten angry and riot-y, and then things changed. It's a cycle of the world, the internet hasn't changed that fact, just made it more noticeable</quote> Nah, his view way more complicated than that. And you're actually kind of agreeing with him without knowing it. His theory is basically that, because humans see the world in stories (and we basically do, this has been a thing sociologists figured out a while ago), we feel most comfortable when we have a single defining story that explains how things are "supposed" to work. For most of human history you can kind of point to the dominant paradigm (whether religion, or the concept of nobility/royalty being better than the masses, etc) and know how most people are defining the universe and their place in it. It's not always the SAME story, but there usually IS one. When a given story "fails" (ie, events in the world call that story into question, because the story can no longer explain why things are happening, or because a new story has come into being that seems to explain things better), that story essentially "dies", and is replaced by a new one. So most of human history is basically one long chain of humans in different places and times shifting from one story to another. Conflict occurs when two contradictory stories overlap and fight for dominance, chaos occurs when a story collapses with no alternative to replace it. (A similar theory is actually sort of discussed in Tamim Ansary's book "The Invention of Yesterday", where he discusses the dominant paradigms of various historical regions, how conflict occurred when they would butt up against neighboring paradigms, and how they would ultimately either replace each other or or "blesh" - blend/mesh - into a new paradigm, and why some paradigms could easily move into some places while seeming being antithetical to others.) Harari's theory is essentially that the 20th century was dominated by three major stories (nationalism/fascism, communism/socialism, and capitalism/liberalism). WWII sort of killed the allure of fascism for most people, and the fall of the USSR did the same for communism. Which mostly left "liberalism" as the dominant global paradigm. But over the last decade or so faith in that has waned as well (he draws the line back to the financial crisis of 2008, but there's probably other potential causes as well - which includes the fact that the rapid growth of technology and inter-connectedness isn't necessarily handled well-enough by existing ideological models, so the overwhelming glut of information is leading to disillusionment), so people are sort of left without any comforting fiction or narrative to believe in. In essence, we're a bunch of children panicking and drowning in existential terror. He points to things like Brexit and Donald Trump getting elected as symptoms of that decline, as people feel more and more helpless and lost in a world they thought they understood. I'd go farther to say that it could easily explain riots as well (especially when you factor in the increased hysteria generated by a year-long pandemic lockdown), and if we really want to feel saucy, we could pull things like identity politics and "the culture war" into the mix (because that's literally people who feel alienated with how they see the world desperately trying to redefine their place in it). Not saying that it's 100% the answer to everything, but it's an interesting theory to consider. Especially if we're trying to understand why everyone seems to be going a bit batshit crazy lately. Doubly so because, if anyone ever wants to FIX things, you sort of need to understand why/how those things are broken in the first place. Short-term quick-fix solutions that address symptoms rather than underlying causes rarely ever solve anything at all. --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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