Gay Laser to Destroy Humanity. Story at 10.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Wherever we're heading, it's almost certainly going to be change, and it will be the product of social competition. There will be winners and losers, and there's nothing to say that we in the US would recognize the winners a century from now as being decidedly American in origin or foundational organization.

I do think that meta-narratives matter, and that we all probably buy into one or two at least. I think mine has to do with the value and importance of civic virtues behind the enlightenment and small "d" democracy.

I had to sit on your post for day and let it marinate. Maybe what Peterson is getting at is the very real social shift away from classic objectivism, the idea that all morality is ultimately reducible to objective absolutes. I think what the Internet has introduced is a sort of collective revolt against the idea that everyone experiences one objective reality of the world around them - because the virtual world in which we occupy ourselves is new territory and is thusly artificial to the ‘natural order’ of things.

The old paradigm of western Liberalism seems to me to be giving way to something new, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. We’ll see this manifest quickly once the Zoomers age into democracy and bring to real life their virtual moralities, ethics, and mores. I guess maybe that’s the post-modernism we’re going to see, when virtual reality intersects with reality, when Internet subjectivism clashes with objective realities. Perhaps a couple of examples - crypto currencies and NFTs supplanting traditional financial systems, or transgendered people leaving their online communities and attempting to interface in the real world, are the bellwethers of this evolving reality. So. To tie this to your quote above, we’re seeing the democratization of everything, thanks to the Internet, and I can’t see this ending well for the institutions we’re accustomed to.

I think I understand your allusion to older people cloistering themselves away. I myself am leaving SLC for a small town and I’ve undertaken self-imposed limits on social media and various Internet forums, sites, and whatnot because the rapid transformation of the world leaves me disoriented and concerned.

- Doc

[Moksha]

Do we know whether those Jewish space lasers will rekindle California forest fires this summer?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Do we know whether those Jewish space lasers will rekindle California forest fires this summer?

They’ve been put into more pressing needs killing Palestinians until further notice.

- Doc

[Gadianton]

I got into that stuff after college for a while as it's basically what came next after Heidegger, where my textbooks left off. Most of the reward is decrypting the puzzle. It looks like the resources for dumbing it down have gotten better over the years, and so there's not much puzzle left. Most of my time back then I put into Derrida and Baudrillard. I was in a bookstore one day, and a new book had come out called "The Gulf War didn't Happen" (or something) by Jean Baudrillard. It was shrink-wrapped, it couldn't have been more than a couple hundred pages, and it cost like 45$, and this was a long time ago.

The title was obviously click-bait to sound shocking, and lure those in who anger quickly over postmodernists denying reality, but according to a summary I read later (possibly on wiki) he wasn't really saying it didn't happen in the way we might think he means, and then followed some usual points about how media distorts or invents, however you want to look at it. No doubt, in his uniquely dense Marxist lingo. And so, the good news is he wasn't denying reality in the way people think and probably made some good points, once you solve the language puzzle. But -- was it really going to be worth the time and dollar investment just for that? Where I ended up with postmodernism was that there could be some pretty interesting stuff at times, but the ROI just wasn't nearly enough to keep up with it.

[honorentheos]

Where I ended up with postmodernism was that there could be some pretty interesting stuff at times, but the ROI just wasn't nearly enough to keep up with it.

What I think is worth while is the core question about meta-narratives and their roles in social order and success. If the post-modern condition is really one where meta-narratives have lost their ability to unite societies, and the condition we find ourselves in is one defined by conflict between small, competing tribes of true believers then where are we heading?

As I poorly tried to say in my replies above, part of me wonders if this is really how things have always been? But because the past is lost to legend and repainted in golden hues by those who have mythologized it's greatness while others suck all the color out of it entirely to declare the past was nothing but oppression and horror for most, are we unable to contextualize the present accurately because we can't take an accurate bearing off the past to triangulate where we are now or where we are heading?

I do think that groups that maintain coherent meta-narrative allegiance are better able to exert power. The right has historically been better than the left in the US at immediately affecting policy because the left is a herd of cats with absolute beliefs in wildly different, contradictory things. That seems to be shifting now, but with it has come a tolerance for intolerance and rigid enforcement of illiberal principles we used to associate with the right. Meta-narratives seem to matter still, but they seem to require coalitions of groups more so than mass shared beliefs.

After suffering the consequences of a shattered worldview that came with the collapse of my belief in Mormonism, I initially thought I had given up on meta-narratives in favor of skepticism. But skepticism itself is a meta-narrative about the best way to approach truth-seeking, as is my belief in the value of small "d" democracy and civic institutions that protect and foster it. I believe in meta-narratives of sorts, yet I know I'm in a minority in my meta-narrative views. That applies here as well as broadly.

I'm honestly curious what others might determine are the meta-narratives they hold to. And I'd argue anyone who claims they don't have one is failing to be introspective and honest with themselves.

[Morley]

I got into that stuff after college for a while as it's basically what came next after Heidegger, where my textbooks left off. Most of the reward is decrypting the puzzle. It looks like the resources for dumbing it down have gotten better over the years, and so there's not much puzzle left. Most of my time back then I put into Derrida and Baudrillard. I was in a bookstore one day, and a new book had come out called "The Gulf War didn't Happen" (or something) by Jean Baudrillard. It was shrink-wrapped, it couldn't have been more than a couple hundred pages, and it cost like 45$, and this was a long time ago.

The title was obviously click-bait to sound shocking, and lure those in who anger quickly over postmodernists denying reality, but according to a summary I read later (possibly on wiki) he wasn't really saying it didn't happen in the way we might think he means, and then followed some usual points about how media distorts or invents, however you want to look at it. No doubt, in his uniquely dense Marxist lingo. And so, the good news is he wasn't denying reality in the way people think and probably made some good points, once you solve the language puzzle. But -- was it really going to be worth the time and dollar investment just for that? Where I ended up with postmodernism was that there could be some pretty interesting stuff at times, but the ROI just wasn't nearly enough to keep up with it.

Excellent. You forced me to look that up in Wikipedia.

On the Persian Gulf War

Baudrillard's provocative 1991 book, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place,[35] raised his public profile as an academic and political commentator. He argued that the first Gulf War was the inverse of the Clausewitzian formula: not "the continuation of politics by other means," but "the continuation of the absence of politics by other means." Accordingly, Saddam Hussein was not fighting the Coalition, but using the lives of his soldiers as a form of sacrifice to preserve his power. The Coalition fighting the Iraqi military was merely dropping 10,000 tonnes of bombs daily, as if proving to themselves that there was an enemy to fight. So, too, were the Western media complicit, presenting the war in real time, by recycling images of war to propagate the notion that the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government were actually fighting, but, such was not the case. Saddam Hussein did not use his military capacity (the Iraqi Air Force). His power was not weakened, evinced by his easy suppression of the 1991 internal uprisings that followed afterwards. Over all, little had changed. Saddam remained undefeated, the "victors" were not victorious, and thus there was no war—i.e., the Gulf War did not occur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard


I had to laugh. I'm sure it's just me, but I kept hearing this as coming from Jerry Seinfeld's whiny voice in front of a NY comedy club audience, as he was working up to the punchline: 'So, there was. No. War!" Laughter from the crowd. (Not a complaint. I love Seinfeld.)

I actually think that what Baudrillard says is a pretty good example of post-structuralism. As I believe is often the case in postmodernism, his critique is cogent and necessary, but the conclusion that he tries to draw--"the Gulf War did not occur"--is a little bizarre.

And since he'd earlier publicly predicted that the war wasn't going to happen, it looks awfully like Baudrillard was just using it to cover is own improvident ass.
.

[Morley]

I'm honestly curious what others might determine are the meta-narratives they hold to.

Interesting topic, honor. I can't get to this now, but will try to return to it in a few days.

[Gadianton]

Well, taking the basic idea of a community narrative not as tied to Lyotard or anybody, I thought about it a little bit the other day over at SeN where DCP was lecturing Gemli on communism as a religion, and then he also denied that religious wars were really religious, because they had underlying economic pressure. A related example would be a potato famine giving rise to the crusades.

Markets aren't good for solving for problems like waging war that require collective action. Religion and political ideology is good for collective action. Stop the Steal doesn't have to be true, it just needs a bunch of (dumb asses) to say they believe it; as long as people unite themselves behind it, that's the point.

It seems like media-type memes (for lack of a better word) have become more powerful than traditional religion. But it's chaotic. There's all this unity, with no direction. Random Trump policies don't really constitute a direction either, aside for keeping himself in power. People clearly can be united, a bunch of jack asses on Ajax's level united themselves and then totally rando, they stormed the capitol. But there is no head to the beast and the beast has no plan.

Back in the day, you had a potato famine that affected everybody. Then you had religious leaders lying to themselves about God being displeased with the sins of a neighboring country that just happens to have potatoes. The priests stir up the peasants and a bunch of doctrines are fabricated to justify a holy war, but at the end of the day, a practical problem is solved that wouldn't have been solved through more honest means.

Today, Youtube, Facebook, Fox News, all have an incredible power that no priest ever had to bring unity, but those doing the unifying have no real plan for anything aside from fueling the fire or bolstering their own popularity or paycheck.

[Morley]

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[honorentheos]

Decided to bump this in the context of the Downward Spiral of Contempt thread. Meta-narratives.