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MrSmiley@lemmy.zipto News@lemmy.world•Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules4·13 hours agoRegardless of the pervasive reach of interpersonal social media and of the Internet in general (unless blocked by effective firewalls), control over the mass media emanating from the political center will still be our most important weapon in establishing our authority after the coup.
– E. Luttwak, Coup D’État: A Practical Handbook. pp. 131.
C’est quoi cette niaiserie? The exception does not make the rule. If you can’t accept human tendency to form hierarchies, it leads to fatal errors if attempting to create an egalitarian society. Can the majority of people live in isolated, mountainous regions living under pre-agrarian civilization conditions? No. It’s only possible small-scale under specific conditions, and even that region is slowly transforming into hierarchical structures on the fringes because of cultural transmission with the outside world.
Zomia is the biggest remaining area of earth whose inhabitants have not been completely absorbed by nation-states, although that time is coming to an end.
MrSmiley@lemmy.zipOPto Videos@lemmy.world•How to respond to societal collapse | Sarah Wilson | TEDxSydney1·1 day ago1:14 - Heuristic, it’s easier to use an empty signifier than spend 20 minutes explaining accelerationism with a palingenetic myth that aligns with and leverages fascism to achieve its apocalyptic goals.
5:33 - She says she has been a climate activist for the past 15-20 years…
Anarchism is not feasible on a large scale, most places in the world will tend towards hierarchy. There are certain necessary conditions for Anarchism to be sustainable long-term, such as the Zomia region in SE Asia due to geography. That’s assuming these tribes are non-hierarchical, I haven’t looked that far into it.
stateless societies like “Zomia” have successfully repelled states using location, specific production methods, and cultural resistance to states.
Welp, I can’t argue that lol.
We aren’t talking normative philosophy or metaphysics. The iron law and SDT are based on observable phenomena supported by empirical evidence. I’m not going to accept an Agrippa trilemma argument where nothing can be proven absolutely true. I understand these concepts about hierarchy may be uncomfortable to one’s ideological fantasy, but it’s not productive to minimize these things because they are uncomfortable.
MrSmiley@lemmy.zipto No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Does anyone else notice an up tick in hostility on Lemmy lately?1·2 days agodeleted by creator
That would be a genetic fallacy if you are basing validity on origin instead of content. Would you prefer the social dominance theory? It’s broader in scale but still explains the inevitability of hierarchy and concentration of power.
The incentive is that resources are lootable, that doesn’t change by swapping out one ideology for another. We can point to the post-WWII eastern bloc, Cuba, and Afghanistan as examples of USSR installing dictators. Ideologies tend to be too myopic in their understanding of reality, all systems have a tendency to form into dominance hierarchies, that’s the core issue. Fortunately, all systems decay over time and after collapse there is a period of time where a decentralized, democratic system can exist for a period of time.
No, because it would form into a dominance hierarchy. It’s the iron law of oligarchy, and communism does not have any mechanisms to prevent its formation. Unless humans evolve beyond their own nature, “anarchocommunism” is not in the realm of possibility.
This feels like a post hoc fallacy. Capitalism is not the cause of those things, societies that organize into dominance hierarchies, regardless of economic organization, cause those things. Slavery, wars, dictators, barbarism, deaths, corruption, and hypocritical systems were present before and in absence of capitalism. The Soviet Union formed into a dominance hierarchy (bureaucrat class instead of capitalist class), and inevitably displayed the same attributes.
Climate change and extreme wealth inequality are the primary drivers of civilization collapse. From that understanding, the actions of this administration makes perfect sense.
It’s called the Dark Enlightenment, they essentially want to accelerate civilization collapse so their utopian vision is realized. The financial backers behind Trump adopted this philosophy, and have articulated their plan: dismantle democracy, Balkanize America and establish a patchwork of technomonarchy city-states. People really need to be talking with their community about localization of production of basic necessities, otherwise it will be chaos, famine and death when the system fails.
You might like Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp, it discusses the concept of fission-fusion cycles, a historical pattern of groups/societies coming together and falling apart. It’s a little more coherent than Polybius’ anacyclosis.
I found this part interesting: A 2016 study by Bradi Heaberlin and Simon DeDeo has found that the evolution of Wikipedia’s network of norms over time is consistent with the iron law of oligarchy.
MrSmiley@lemmy.zipto politics @lemmy.world•‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump11·3 days agoYou started with a thought terminating cliché, then followed up with ad hominems, then an assertion based on cherry-picked information, and topped it off with a strawman. That is not an argument, you have made no argument.
MrSmiley@lemmy.zipto politics @lemmy.world•‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump13·3 days agoWell at least you’ve shifted your argument from ad hominem to the fallacy of incomplete information. Bravo!
MrSmiley@lemmy.zipto politics @lemmy.world•‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump13·3 days agoPolicy has only aligned with the will of the people 55% of the time. That’s not so bad, assuming we just ignore the observed and prevalent phenomenons of elite capture of public opinion and manufacturing of consent.
Of course, democracy exists when we discard the unsavory bits of reality, anything can be democracy when its meaning is an empty signifier.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
I’m not saying democracy can’t exist, it can and it should, but it’s only a fleeting notion in any society based on dominance hierarchy. Democracy does not exist without a well-informed public, a people plagued by ignorance do not have free will, and in consequence do not make their own decisions.
There is nothing representative or democratic about US democracy, if we are being honest with ourselves.
MrSmiley@lemmy.zipto politics @lemmy.world•‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump56·3 days agoAn oligarchy in democratic accroutements.
Oh you weren’t joking, they are real!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn