"The argument is that the online wing of the new right argues exactly like the SJW left did a few years ago."
Why should this be surprising? That method of argument worked quite well for many people! (It ran flat when the movement chewed through all its quokkas and had to deal with targets that fought back, of course, but the Right has a ways to go before it gets there.)
I guess the difference is that nobody's looking at the Right doing this and telling themselves that the people involved simply *care* too much about a *good* *cause* to bother with being nice.
You are very on the page here. Honestly am in the zero growth camp. Up to and never including anything less than a big sloppy smile for ever baby young or old. Let me share that I did my kind of selfish math on your initial 801 words and they describe the world I live in and the picture I take away is painted by John Gray in books and in interviews, as painted by you!? In every resect exactly the same world humanly as it has been since 1470 since the advance of publishing. I see zero differencee except our collected organs demanding their particular trace minerals. Giiive me my I-ron you bastards! I need pickles! Chicken hearts aaaugh (Kathy: copyrite the Golub Syndicate) not a micron of change.
I really respect your reasoning around paywalls! Rare discretion that more people on this site should embrace. And I agree, it's all too easy to write a hit piece and/or takedown that goes viral not for its content but its meanness... (in fact, there is one writer in particular i'm thinking about here). It's a bad habit to fall into for a variety of reasons, I think. Good to stay aware!
Really superficial by me maybe but it is noteworthy that it seems a disproportionate number of these anti-modernist nihilist activities come out of parts of the West Coast where people do in theory have comparatively access to natural beauty (America in general is a spectacularly gorgeous place, there are so many different striking biomes that if the country weren't exceptional in so many other ways/had many other claims to fame, this would probably be the thing everyone knows about the US). Of course a lot of this is just simply overdetermined by the fact that the tech companies/associated milieus and unis and the Pacific anarchist scenes etc are just there already, so a lot of mischief would take place there vs other places, but if anything I'd think the ability to literally Get Outside in Paradise would reduce the appeal of violence in favour of the Walden Option (hell, as I was noting, there are extensive wooded etc areas even near random Acela suburbs as a salve against stereotypical shoebox alienation). But then, the fact that violence itself breaks down the nature/technological barrier or reveals its phoniness is perhaps central to understanding this. Things like Camp Fire, the Paradise Fire, the disasters which take the form of raging natural forces but then are revealed to be downstream of human activities (climate change or top-down governance), also creating a very blatant example of "out of control positive feedback," meritocratic/systems breakdown; the eco-systemic understanding all made visually ominous and the stakes illustrated by burns and ashes
Another great post to enjoy with my morning coffee. Two things that really popped out. First, while I love your work and trend more toward the communications-technology is good camp as well as inevitable, I also believe in the work of Ian McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary) and Dr. Leonard Shlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess) that demonstrates the curious fact that with each advancement in communications technology, from the advent of the alphabet to social media, there's a moment in time where our brains literally can't handle it. We go mad. We get violent. It takes a few generations for our minds to integrate the increased input of information. Group evil (love M. Scott Peck's take in The People Of the Lie) is more likely, or call it mob violence. The more online a personality is, the more they show this bit of derangement. From the efilism of which you speak to the evolution of Candace Owens from mommy-sleuth to paranoid conspiracy queen, they're two sides of the same coin--mental illness on steroids as a result of information overload.
Perhaps those "inside" the web can't see it, and I often joke that the reason I subscribe to you is because I know my own mind is vulnerable, so I can't participate the way I'd like without going mad, but being a software engineer and techy person (I started programming on my TI-99 when I was 12) I want to know what's up. I also want to know how minds are being shaped by the online world. So, I give you money to do the dirty work, then enjoy your investigations over a cup of coffee. Anyway, all that to say that I caution everyone who thinks the whole thing is harmless. Again, it's not about content, it's about the meat of our left-hemisphere being over-stimulated and it has real world consequences and disease. There needs to be a balance. This btw is why Waldorf Education doesn't teach kids to read until the third grade. Until then, they use image and storytelling and even writing to teach literacy. To allow them to have the oral way of learning before the literary. It's for brain development, nothing more. And my standard disclaimer before anyone freaks out, my own kids were Waldorf raised and didn't read until 9 and 10 and they are completely literate adults. You don't need to read at five to make it in the world.
The second thing you wrote that got me...that in Chicago people are less online and different. I agree. As you know, I split my time between Chicago and Santa Cruz. In Chicago, while it's quite liberal the way any city should be, the majority of the people over 35 are about getting shit done and differences are forgivable. You can challenge all narratives and still get invited to a party. I've long been more libertarian and an Independent. I don't have a political team and haven't since 2010. No one in Chicago cares. At least, they might think I'm an idealist who is risking the fascist takeover because I won't declare fidelity to the Democrats, but they party with me and eat at my table and tell me they love me. In Santa Cruz, this is not the case. I just arrived, literally last Friday, after being away for 8 months and not one, but two women refused to talk to me.
One has already told me that because my husband defended JD Vance back in October of 2024 (We both loved Hillbilly Elegy and my husband clarified something someone had said that was false about Vance) she will never speak to me again. She never even asked if we voted for Trump, just assumed that because we'd take the time to read Vance's book and listen to him on Joe Rogan, we were her enemy. This woman's son was my son's best friend growing up. We did so much together. We raised our kids together. I read one bad book and I'm out. A second woman has joined her in refusing to speak to us. I said hello to her at the party on Saturday, and she walked away. I asked her how she was, I mean I haven't seen her in 8 months, there's lots to tell me. She replied she was pretty good considering the state of the world. I said yes, it's intense but that I try to focus on the beauty of what's in front of me, and she said something about how we're pushing it to the limits with our carelessness and there might not be anything left and then walked away.
She later reached out to apologize, but she's uncomfortable about this huge political gulf between us because we scare her. She and I have only spoken about politics once, when she reached out during Operation Midway in Chicago to ask me what it was like on the ground. I told her the truth, that in my neighborhood, Lakeview, as I lived my own life which involves being out and about a lot, I never saw ICE and I lived next to a migrant shelter where 900 Venezuelans were housed for two years in an abandoned Catholic high school building. Just after Trump was elected, the shelter was opened to all Chicago's homeless and is now 100% black and I'm not sure where the migrants went. Still, ICE never came, the neighborhood was quiet, and it was fine while the migrants were there, it's fine now with the homeless shelter, and I'm not sure what the fuss is all about on any "side" of the spectacle, because to be fair there's the whole Chicago is a shithole filled with crime narrative that is also untrue where I live and I argue against that as well. It's not a shithole. It was also void of ICE during the big raid that the entire nation was stressing about. This woman now will not speak to me. I said the same thing to my Chicago friends who asked me if ICE was wandering my streets and they were like, ah, okay, good to know. If indeed Chicagoans are in general less tied to TikTok and YouTube personalities, then maybe that's why it's easier to speak the truth without being isolated there. My husband and I are now likely to not be invited anymore to events in Santa Cruz, as more and more of the women here in SC decide that our interest in Vance's book and our reporting of events based on what we see rather than what we feel is dangerous.
This isn't a good feeling. It brings up a bit of paranoia. My antidote to this? Pray. Read some CS Lewis. Exercise. Garden. Try to make new friends, I guess.
that sounds terrible, one reason I am anonymous on here (someone else asked in another context earlier today) is to avoid this sort of thing re families especially. It is really scary that people can come to see loved ones in this way and cut others out of their lives due to ideology. The worst part of it is is that for most people there are no real stakes, they don't personally know politicians or celebrity criminals/heroes and so on, they are just essentially TV characters to them but are taken seriously. I really feel bad for you and I really hope they come around. This is why the political environment needs to be de-polarised. I do wonder if part of this is cultural narrators/movies/guidance councillors/etc telling people that XZY statement (which can literally just be a differing view on any of the major culture wars disputes, or even just not having a clear view) should be perceived as traumatic or hurtful and something to see as crossing a red line and then people reading the behaviours of loved ones through these frames. People take everything as an attack on their identity but this is not healthy because the world is full of diversity and expecting everyone to affirm ones' perceived ideas of the good and true is not going to work
Thanks. It is a recipe for endless anxiety, paranoia, and depression if you need the world around you to be exactly as you like and un-triggering in all aspects. That's impossible. The path to peace is to surrender to the pain and confusion around you, to not take it personally, and instead focus on the things you can influence. Like the work that needs attention, the people who need your help or company (even if you don't agree with them politically) the elder in need, the migrant selling you candy outside the Walgreens. That's where your power lies. I often wonder why anyone would give Trump that much power either way. I mean, I'll never meet the guy and neither will they. He's not in our living room, at our table. He's a total TV character in all ways. They all are. That's a good point indeed. Why are we destroying the communities and families we built over his Truth Social posts? Politicians aren't family or friends.
"The argument is that the online wing of the new right argues exactly like the SJW left did a few years ago."
Why should this be surprising? That method of argument worked quite well for many people! (It ran flat when the movement chewed through all its quokkas and had to deal with targets that fought back, of course, but the Right has a ways to go before it gets there.)
I guess the difference is that nobody's looking at the Right doing this and telling themselves that the people involved simply *care* too much about a *good* *cause* to bother with being nice.
Where can I see Freya's dialogue about your post?
You are very on the page here. Honestly am in the zero growth camp. Up to and never including anything less than a big sloppy smile for ever baby young or old. Let me share that I did my kind of selfish math on your initial 801 words and they describe the world I live in and the picture I take away is painted by John Gray in books and in interviews, as painted by you!? In every resect exactly the same world humanly as it has been since 1470 since the advance of publishing. I see zero differencee except our collected organs demanding their particular trace minerals. Giiive me my I-ron you bastards! I need pickles! Chicken hearts aaaugh (Kathy: copyrite the Golub Syndicate) not a micron of change.
I really respect your reasoning around paywalls! Rare discretion that more people on this site should embrace. And I agree, it's all too easy to write a hit piece and/or takedown that goes viral not for its content but its meanness... (in fact, there is one writer in particular i'm thinking about here). It's a bad habit to fall into for a variety of reasons, I think. Good to stay aware!
Hope you feel better and better soon :)
Really superficial by me maybe but it is noteworthy that it seems a disproportionate number of these anti-modernist nihilist activities come out of parts of the West Coast where people do in theory have comparatively access to natural beauty (America in general is a spectacularly gorgeous place, there are so many different striking biomes that if the country weren't exceptional in so many other ways/had many other claims to fame, this would probably be the thing everyone knows about the US). Of course a lot of this is just simply overdetermined by the fact that the tech companies/associated milieus and unis and the Pacific anarchist scenes etc are just there already, so a lot of mischief would take place there vs other places, but if anything I'd think the ability to literally Get Outside in Paradise would reduce the appeal of violence in favour of the Walden Option (hell, as I was noting, there are extensive wooded etc areas even near random Acela suburbs as a salve against stereotypical shoebox alienation). But then, the fact that violence itself breaks down the nature/technological barrier or reveals its phoniness is perhaps central to understanding this. Things like Camp Fire, the Paradise Fire, the disasters which take the form of raging natural forces but then are revealed to be downstream of human activities (climate change or top-down governance), also creating a very blatant example of "out of control positive feedback," meritocratic/systems breakdown; the eco-systemic understanding all made visually ominous and the stakes illustrated by burns and ashes
Another great post to enjoy with my morning coffee. Two things that really popped out. First, while I love your work and trend more toward the communications-technology is good camp as well as inevitable, I also believe in the work of Ian McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary) and Dr. Leonard Shlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess) that demonstrates the curious fact that with each advancement in communications technology, from the advent of the alphabet to social media, there's a moment in time where our brains literally can't handle it. We go mad. We get violent. It takes a few generations for our minds to integrate the increased input of information. Group evil (love M. Scott Peck's take in The People Of the Lie) is more likely, or call it mob violence. The more online a personality is, the more they show this bit of derangement. From the efilism of which you speak to the evolution of Candace Owens from mommy-sleuth to paranoid conspiracy queen, they're two sides of the same coin--mental illness on steroids as a result of information overload.
Perhaps those "inside" the web can't see it, and I often joke that the reason I subscribe to you is because I know my own mind is vulnerable, so I can't participate the way I'd like without going mad, but being a software engineer and techy person (I started programming on my TI-99 when I was 12) I want to know what's up. I also want to know how minds are being shaped by the online world. So, I give you money to do the dirty work, then enjoy your investigations over a cup of coffee. Anyway, all that to say that I caution everyone who thinks the whole thing is harmless. Again, it's not about content, it's about the meat of our left-hemisphere being over-stimulated and it has real world consequences and disease. There needs to be a balance. This btw is why Waldorf Education doesn't teach kids to read until the third grade. Until then, they use image and storytelling and even writing to teach literacy. To allow them to have the oral way of learning before the literary. It's for brain development, nothing more. And my standard disclaimer before anyone freaks out, my own kids were Waldorf raised and didn't read until 9 and 10 and they are completely literate adults. You don't need to read at five to make it in the world.
The second thing you wrote that got me...that in Chicago people are less online and different. I agree. As you know, I split my time between Chicago and Santa Cruz. In Chicago, while it's quite liberal the way any city should be, the majority of the people over 35 are about getting shit done and differences are forgivable. You can challenge all narratives and still get invited to a party. I've long been more libertarian and an Independent. I don't have a political team and haven't since 2010. No one in Chicago cares. At least, they might think I'm an idealist who is risking the fascist takeover because I won't declare fidelity to the Democrats, but they party with me and eat at my table and tell me they love me. In Santa Cruz, this is not the case. I just arrived, literally last Friday, after being away for 8 months and not one, but two women refused to talk to me.
One has already told me that because my husband defended JD Vance back in October of 2024 (We both loved Hillbilly Elegy and my husband clarified something someone had said that was false about Vance) she will never speak to me again. She never even asked if we voted for Trump, just assumed that because we'd take the time to read Vance's book and listen to him on Joe Rogan, we were her enemy. This woman's son was my son's best friend growing up. We did so much together. We raised our kids together. I read one bad book and I'm out. A second woman has joined her in refusing to speak to us. I said hello to her at the party on Saturday, and she walked away. I asked her how she was, I mean I haven't seen her in 8 months, there's lots to tell me. She replied she was pretty good considering the state of the world. I said yes, it's intense but that I try to focus on the beauty of what's in front of me, and she said something about how we're pushing it to the limits with our carelessness and there might not be anything left and then walked away.
She later reached out to apologize, but she's uncomfortable about this huge political gulf between us because we scare her. She and I have only spoken about politics once, when she reached out during Operation Midway in Chicago to ask me what it was like on the ground. I told her the truth, that in my neighborhood, Lakeview, as I lived my own life which involves being out and about a lot, I never saw ICE and I lived next to a migrant shelter where 900 Venezuelans were housed for two years in an abandoned Catholic high school building. Just after Trump was elected, the shelter was opened to all Chicago's homeless and is now 100% black and I'm not sure where the migrants went. Still, ICE never came, the neighborhood was quiet, and it was fine while the migrants were there, it's fine now with the homeless shelter, and I'm not sure what the fuss is all about on any "side" of the spectacle, because to be fair there's the whole Chicago is a shithole filled with crime narrative that is also untrue where I live and I argue against that as well. It's not a shithole. It was also void of ICE during the big raid that the entire nation was stressing about. This woman now will not speak to me. I said the same thing to my Chicago friends who asked me if ICE was wandering my streets and they were like, ah, okay, good to know. If indeed Chicagoans are in general less tied to TikTok and YouTube personalities, then maybe that's why it's easier to speak the truth without being isolated there. My husband and I are now likely to not be invited anymore to events in Santa Cruz, as more and more of the women here in SC decide that our interest in Vance's book and our reporting of events based on what we see rather than what we feel is dangerous.
This isn't a good feeling. It brings up a bit of paranoia. My antidote to this? Pray. Read some CS Lewis. Exercise. Garden. Try to make new friends, I guess.
that sounds terrible, one reason I am anonymous on here (someone else asked in another context earlier today) is to avoid this sort of thing re families especially. It is really scary that people can come to see loved ones in this way and cut others out of their lives due to ideology. The worst part of it is is that for most people there are no real stakes, they don't personally know politicians or celebrity criminals/heroes and so on, they are just essentially TV characters to them but are taken seriously. I really feel bad for you and I really hope they come around. This is why the political environment needs to be de-polarised. I do wonder if part of this is cultural narrators/movies/guidance councillors/etc telling people that XZY statement (which can literally just be a differing view on any of the major culture wars disputes, or even just not having a clear view) should be perceived as traumatic or hurtful and something to see as crossing a red line and then people reading the behaviours of loved ones through these frames. People take everything as an attack on their identity but this is not healthy because the world is full of diversity and expecting everyone to affirm ones' perceived ideas of the good and true is not going to work
Thanks. It is a recipe for endless anxiety, paranoia, and depression if you need the world around you to be exactly as you like and un-triggering in all aspects. That's impossible. The path to peace is to surrender to the pain and confusion around you, to not take it personally, and instead focus on the things you can influence. Like the work that needs attention, the people who need your help or company (even if you don't agree with them politically) the elder in need, the migrant selling you candy outside the Walgreens. That's where your power lies. I often wonder why anyone would give Trump that much power either way. I mean, I'll never meet the guy and neither will they. He's not in our living room, at our table. He's a total TV character in all ways. They all are. That's a good point indeed. Why are we destroying the communities and families we built over his Truth Social posts? Politicians aren't family or friends.