Best products from r/stupidpol

> Of the many social and technological problems early humans would have encountered, I can imagine few which would not have involved deference to individuals with cultural prestige or privileged relationship to social norms, therefore the recognition of a right of certain individuals to command or decide in certain situations.

This here may be the problem, because it does not conform to what has been studied and observed or described by people who lived in our closest analogues to the types of societies that humans lived in for literally thousands of years. I really recommend reading this book, its very interesting, has pictures even lol, and is a super fun read with very little technical language. I think you may be very surprised to read the details of just how power/prestige worked in these societies. As well as the stories of how hierarchy (of the kind we think of as normal) evolved in different circumstances and how it came to dominate and was also resisted.

https://www.amazon.com/Creation-Inequality-Prehistoric-Ancestors-Monarchy/dp/0674064690

Even if from the outside it might look like a special person 'decided' something and then others obey, expressing power of a sort, that is not how it plays out or is experienced. Above all, it is most important that power NOT be seen to be exercised by a special person. It is a social game that we might say lies to itself about what is happening, but playing the game is what is interesting, how it works and why it is essential. Even if we could make the argument that some individuals in the group do have more decision making power or influence, it is important in the group that this is not evident in a way that exposes the powerful as powerful. Not because people are deluded, but because everyone understands the need to play the game and why they play it. Nothing is more important than the group and minimizing conflict within the group. Nothing is more harmful in the group than special people who think they deserve a bit extra based on a natural or earned ability/prestige.

You also state that the mechanisms of envy don't target authority figures, and I'm not sure where you would get such an idea when in fact it is usually the opposite in societies that are 'fierce egalitarian' in structure. It is precisely the management of envy among the group for those individuals who are smarter, better looking, better hunters, better gatherers, better story tellers, and in other ways unequal to their peers that matters for the group. Nobody is more aware of this than those talented people themselves, they must practice huge amounts of social intelligence to navigate the pitfalls presented by their 'superiority' in the eyes of their society. Boasting is probably among the greatest sins in these societies, and nobody knows the risks more than those who might feel they have reason to boast. Again, the two books I recommended are really fascinating in regards to these questions.

I've actually only read Exiting the Vampire Castle, and I (not surprisingly) find it really powerful, and not just because of the, well, context. I haven't read much Zizek and Adorno, to be honest. Once in awhile I try to dip into Zizek and it just doesn't work for me. He did a thing on trans issues, for example, which wasn't just offensive but that sort of offensive you get when you're trying to write in a clever and look-how-smart-I-am-way about a subject where you REALLY don't have any genuine knowledge. (I'm lobbing one over the plate with that remark, aren't I?)

As for the question about the U.S., it's really interesting, isn't it? We've always been an insanely individualistic people, and I think the absence of a strong left, lately, makes those impulses even stronger. I can't recommend "Age of Fracture" by the Princeton historian Daniel T. Rodgers enough on this stuff. From early on;

>Across the multiple fronts of ideational battle, from the speeches of presidents to books of social and cultural theory, conceptions of human nature that in the post-World War II era had been thick with context, social circumstance, institutions, and history gave way to conceptions of human nature that stressed choice, agency, performance, and desire. Strong metaphors of society were supplanted by weaker ones. Imagined collectivities shrank; notions of structure and power thinned out. Viewed by its acts of mind, the last quarter of the century was an era of disaggregation, a great age of fracture.

Could anyone sum it up better than that? And while Rodgers believes that 9/11 temporarily slowed down or partially reversed this trend (which doesn't mean he supports, like, the foreign-policy response to it, of course), he thinks it then continued apace.

I grew up in Poland, and we're far too Catholic in there. My parents were indifferent liberals, but they raised me as a Catholic so I could fit in with the surrounding culture. In a sense we 'played' Catholicism for the benefits of it. I stuck with it until I became a teenager, then I briefly became an atheist only to decide that I'm really a theist - I believe that there are most likely "higher beings" out there that relatively to us are essentially gods, but I don't believe that there have been meaningful interactions between us and them that are being passed down via organized religions' scriptures (duh). If they exist they don't give a shit about us, if they even know about us. In a sense it's a lot like believing that we live in a simulation - whoever's in the control room for the simulation-universe would effectively be a god of that universe.

I rejected atheism because, similarly to you, I found out that I could not reject belief nor that I could come to reject the awe I feel towards all manners of individually practised faith, regardless of religion, even though I am highly critical of most collective religious practice. I picked up the Syntheism book for that very reason (wiki article) and I'm somewhat fond of the idea in itself, but much like, uhhh, with atheism and postmodernism there's a lot of ideological baggage that the syntheists carry around that I want nothing to do with.

I'm not going to discuss this with someone who hasn't done basic readings on the topic because it can be pretty laborious and it's such a radical idea as to put a lot of people off.

I will however point you into the direction of Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman if you'd like to learn more. It dispels a lot of common misconceptions about this type of ideology and has direct responses to some claims you've made in your post.

Good luck, friend.

I recommend reading No Retreat: The Secret War between Britains Anti-fascists and the Far Right, it's a biography of two men involved in militant antifascism in Britain in the 70ies and 80ies. It mostly about beating the shit out of nazis at various pubs and streets in England but it also features some good politics.

Red Action was one of the better antifa-groups in modern times, due to being overwhelmingly working class.

Don't know much about american antifa, but they don't really strike me as impressive - neither politically nor as a fighting unit.

Good catch. I really meant to say “moving beyond our current form of liberal democracy” because the issue is not so much democracy, which as I mentioned I believe has benefits beyond merely producing a decision. I edited.

I highly recommend Jacque Ranciere’s short book Hatred Of Democracy. He presents a pointed and responsible critique of liberal democracy, and fleshes out an impressive an argument for this line of thought.

they took inspiration from the actual revolution that brought mao to power. if you are interested in that, this is the first political book i ever read and covers it extensively. but i dont think it has implications for the us, which lacks the population density and social structures present in 1940s chinese villages. (it is still a great fucking book).

Fair point but the thing to remember is these guys in America are utterly controlled and chock full of informants -- and incidentally a lot of those ex-Iron Guard guys wound up in America after going into exile. The GOP's outreach into the Romanian expat community for decades was run directly by ex-Iron Guard dudes (also look up Laszlo Pasztor, ex-Arrow Cross, who worked on the Hungarian community) via the Republican Heritage Groups Council. This is how the old Nixon gang operated. Also worked for Reagan and Bush Sr. -- the latter was the CIA's man in the White House, note the intelligence agency link here as it was the agencies which facilitated these guys moving over to act as representatives of "anti-communist" (read: fascist) emigres during the Cold War after the Red Army rolled in in 1945.

Most of them are super old or dead now, though.

Now you ever heard about any of this? There's a reason these conspiracies -- which are true -- don't make it into the public consciousness while there's more than enough money sloshing around for Alex Jones to tell people to vote for Republicans (the oil and gas party) because Cultural Marxists wanna take away your video games.

And look at all these /pol/ kids. They couldn't find their own asses with their own hands without some kind of direction. Bannon was appointed basically to be the Nazi turd wrangler in chief but the problem is this new generation isn't as good at it as the old guys, who were better at concealing it under layers of plausible deniability. This whole crew gets too excited and nervous and think "wow fellas, we're doing some real sneaky spy shit!" and they screw it up.

Good time to learn about this fucker's evil machinations if you're interested.

Two worthwhile books have come out recently detailing the breadth and depth of the Koch bros' satanic power. I'll link to the audiobook versions since our brains are broken:

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

• an incredibly detailed expose of the Kochs' forays into politics, which managed to shock even an embittered marxist such as myself. I honestly thought that bourgeois democracy was better than this.
  
  Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean
  
  
• this one is less entirely about the Kochs / political journalism, and more focused on their grander designs, the intellectual and political project they funded. Spoiler alert, James Buchanan is a class enemy.
  
  These two authors are libs but they've done some damn good work here.

Good catch. From Totem and Taboo, published in 1918

Yes, it is. Read this book on the identity politics of differentiation within medicine.

Make an actual argument. Repeating "its a buzzword because it is in gender studies" isn't an argument.

>unhinged articles

Why is it unhinged

>At some point reality is going to smack you in the face

Lol okay, it's not my ideology that's led to the current situation

sure, yeah. his whole platform is in the direction of pragmatism and existentialism ("how does it work" and "how do i work")

for obvious reasons (youtube philosopher) he gets grouped in with the wackos that sell extremely embarassing logic/rhetoric books but he basically speaks to people at an emotional level. if you know philosophy, he's 0% analytical (the express everything in rigid logic branch), 100% continental/pragmatic

Or Intellectuals & Society by Sowell

​

Edit: I realize that this comment is likely to get downvoted. But I really think that we on the left should start engaging more with the ideas of Hayek and Sowell, and I'm not the only one

So I'm going to use this opportunity to plug what is the only good book on the caste system: Sumit Guha's Beyond Caste. I never truly understood how Medieval Southern Asia worked in material terms until reading this.

lol jesus fucking christ, everyone understands that aipac is shorthand for a constellation of pro-israel lobbying groups and donors. go read the israel lobby if you're seriously this dense

The author is Temple Grandin - she has written a number of books circling the area of autism. I believe this is the one I am thinking of.