Pacificity of Liberalism

[Cognisant]

I responded to this on Facebook with the following:

Spoiler

Religion is a blatant fraud, a crime against humanity, secular society would abolish it were we not so afraid, not of the faithful and most certainly not of the things they believe in or the things they might do. Rather we're afraid that if we stood up and ended this charade once and for all that we wouldn't know where to stop, where the final line is between faith and thought, we're afraid of becoming the very thing we seek to stop. Pray we never lose that fear.

I think the liberal ideology is passive, perhaps too passive.
Note: I'm not talking about the Australian Liberal Party who are tricky-bastard conservatives.

If I went around brainwashing children into thinking they should pay me a tithe when they grow up and/or make regular donations to my organization (as payment for admission to an afterlife paradise) or else they and/or the people they care about will suffer for all eternity, and I didn't do this under the pretext of it being a religion, I would be labelled a conman, an abuser of children and be legally punished as such.

Yet here we are... you know exactly what I'm talking about even though I haven't thrown about any identifying labels.

I'm not blaming you personally it's a problem that has been cyclical throughout human history, with the rise and fall of every empire there has been religion or more specifically a conflict between destructive regressive conservatism and tragically apathetic pacifistic liberalism. No doubt when the Great Library of Alexandria was burned to the ground by the torches of a theistic mob scholars watched on from the shadows and wondered "how did it come to this", unwilling to admit to themselves that they knew exactly how this had happened, that they had done nothing as their enemies plotted and made moves against them assuming that because they were right they were untouchable.

We are no different, despite supposedly being more open minded and tolerant and libertarian than ever before we let ourselves be ruled by leaders who are sexist racist homophobic religious conservatives!

Despite our supposedly liberal culture in democratic counties the world over wealth equality and social stratification is getting worse, foreign policies are becoming increasingly hostile, exploitative and xenophobic; education standards are falling, military budgets are rising, unbiased media is an oxymoron, sure we win small victories here and there but they're only letting us win those battles so we don't realize that we're losing the war, not to the terrorists and despots overseas but to the ones in our own countries!

 

[Black Rose]

Obviously, I must be a good Christian and begin with a Bible passage. Notice the orange words as the correct translation.

Spoiler: Bible Pasage

Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralyzed Man
17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18 Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man The Human Being has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

Pacificity of Liberalism

Parden my profanity but the Bullshit is mounting. The only reason liberalism exist is because Jesus taught passivity. Jesus also taught that because people were passive that the infighting would be so bad that people would lose faith it the religion he created. But then things would settle down because it is hard to fight love. Love being the message preached to the ends of the earth.

Pacivity of Christianity = 2 billion followers. Cool beans.

And I believe humans evolved from a common ancestor with cats (my species)

But Ravi Zacharias once said after seeing a Richer Dawkins speech, that he should go to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and say Mohamad was an evil man and see what happens. He'd be stoned or beheaded. In America, you could stand at a crowd like Dawkins did and say Jesus needs a dildo shoved up his ass and you would have nothing done to you. Yes, Christianity is wrong about science but it's not Islam. Liberals believe in feminism but not for Muslim women. Liberal believe religion is evil but only religions the give them the freedom to do science. Religion has stupid ideas, but passive religion does not behead you, does not stone you, obeys the law, gives atheists freedom of speech. Lets all 100 percent of public schools teach evolution.

Stupid ideas die. Next comes the A.I.
Passive liberalism doesn't make sense, its crybaby stuff. Kids stuff. Stuff that you learn in your 20's so you can debate the real stuff in your 30's. I am old enough to remember when Pewdiepie was not mainstream when no one used the internet when people read books. It was so quiet back then. I am getting off track.

Liberalism as an ideology doesn't do crap for science just like air doesn't do crap for breathing. You know why? because if air became an ideology we would need to force people to breathe and we would need to force them to beath correctly. Maybe force them to breathe only carbon dioxide (see how science smart I am, I know carbon dioxide kills people). Liberalism only works if it is not an ideology but is part of the education system. That is why feminism loves the oppression of women in Islam. Islam is an oppressed race of people so race trumps gender according to feminism. This is their ideology they wish to force on everyone. They cannot force people to help give gender equality to women in Islam but the can force people to see Islam as a race and not a religion. Liberalism educates you that people have rights and that you cannot force people to believe think and do what you want them to do.

Repeat: Liberalism educates you that people have rights and that you cannot force people to believe think and do what you want them to do. Dun Dun Dun, Passive Christianity. People do not understand the shit people did to each other before Christianity. The world was full of moral disease. Wars and false attributions of the value of The Human Being.

You teach the bible in my class I'll beat you up? What the Fuck is he talking about. Is Neil Degrasse Tyson A Paranoid Schizophrenic? What is his fucking problem? This is not 1920's America. What next? Is he going to say the bible lynches black peoples minds? And Richard Dawkins will say white genocide goes against his anti-pacifist liberalism values. Grow the fuck up. These mother fuckers, if we want to use kind words, don't understand liberalism, I have rights, no one can force me to give away my rights and Christians do not do this, they obey the law. If the law sucks we organize and make better laws. Go call the cops if a nut is in your classroom. Christians have no power to destroy science because the powers of capitalism are too great. Science wins because Capitalism wins. Grow up. Liberalism values is/are safe. Go eat your American hot dogs.

Just remember I say this on the pretense that I accept that Jesus was a human and I am a kitty cat and that cats and humans had a common ancestor.

 

[Black Rose]

How the Fuck do I edit.
what I wrote is unreadable

 

[Black Rose]

 

[QuickTwist]

I don't think you are saying anything new Cog, so it's kind of a yawn IMO.

 

[Yellow]

I think I understand your perspective, Cog, and so I have to apologize in advance for how exasperating my response may be.

I can't speak for other pacifist liberals, but I know for my part, I don't want to get into a shouting match with an imbecile. I'll go hoarse, and they'll take it as a sign of divine intervention.

More specifically, isn't "fighting back" how the fear-mongering, conservative, nationalist, religious, firearm enthusiasts started out? If you speak with any adequately brainwashed First World Christian, for example, they truly believe themselves to be a peaceful, egalitarian, oppressed minority. I just can't bring myself to risk that path.

If that means my library is going to burn down, so be it. I can't force someone to agree with me, and I wouldn't want to. It defeats the purpose.

I believe that we can't make people better because there's nothing wrong with us. With that as my personal foundation, I can't help but conclude that if this is a cyclical paradigm of thought, then perhaps it's just a natural part of human sociology. We are all crowding in on the same finite resources. It always seems to come down to tangible resources, in my observation, even when the ideology appears unrelated.

Maybe that's really the difference between us. Conservative mentality seem to involve a mortal fear of sharing resources, and liberal ethos tends to be accommodating. It's only natural that a fear of loss would motivate people to mobilize behind a charismatic nut-job.

I realize that I might change my mind when my libraries are ash. I might wish I had been more forceful, but my liberal, pacifist mindset reminds me that this is just a fear-reaction.

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." -The unholy lovechild of Kermit and Miss Piggy

 

[QuickTwist]

LMFAO at the quote.

Seriously tho, the differences that people think there actually are, are not really as extreme as people like to think. Each person is living their individual life. If you are middle class to upper middle class in the US, you likely are pretty privileged. Privileged people mostly function the same. They have all their needs met and they are just trying to live a peaceful existence mostly because they are threatened by losing what they have. Nut jobs are a horrible exception to the otherwise mostly passive people and whether they are liberal or conservative doesn't really make a whole lot of difference because the differences between those two groups of people are remarkably the same.

Case and point, people believe what their actions are. Functionally, the middle class all looks pretty much the same so they all effectively believe pretty much the same things.

 

[Black Rose]

for the glory of satan

puppies and smiles

 

[Hadoblado]

I don't think you are saying anything new Cog, so it's kind of a yawn IMO.

I don't really like this sentiment. If you find something boring, don't respond. People are talking about it because *they* find it interesting.

Sure sometimes people fixate on particular things. Sometimes it's too much. Sometimes people bring their fixations to places where they're not really appropriate. But I don't think Cog's doing any of this.

Sorta weird that you said the topic was boring, then made a response to it...

 

[Jennywocky]

I think at some point, belief systems have to become nuanced in order to survive. rather than taking unrealistic ideas to what amounts to a suicidal conclusion. Maybe what passes for liberalism in the USA has recently been passive for some decades (because I can't really say that FDR's job program and social programs were passive, nor a lot of the uprising for civil rights in the 50's, and so forth), but US ideology has seemed to become more extreme on both ends. There's no other good reason why liberals have been able to be cast as having softness problems for a few decades, while conservatives have veered in the other direction.

Yes, there are tendencies. I think it's easier to be "hard" when you're clinging to resources, putting up borders, seeing things outside your tribe as the enemy; and it's easier to be "soft" when you're looking to be more inclusive. One side NATURALLY slips into warfare and defensive postures, the other risks assimilation or vulnerability because it sees acceptance and integration as imperative. But when either posture becomes an extreme, then it risks self-extermination for obvious reasons. Obviously there needs to be some effort at self-tempering, in order to preserve itself. For liberalism (and it's become more common recently, once it got bitch slapped enough and finally accepted that to do nothing is to lose and then die), that means digging in, fighting, pushing back, accepting that "realistic tolerance" doesn't mean "tolerating" cancerous ideologies that will eat it alive. Systems here still tend to have some kind of crazy pie-in-the-sky idolization of "noble truths" where if you die with your values intact, then you somehow still win (and sure, this can be blamed on religions like Christianity but there are others, where losing/dying as a martyr is actually a win scenario), but realistically if you die, then your views die with you. Survival is necessary if you want what you fight for to survive as well. Belief systems that promote / endorse the death of those who hold them, in the game of natural selection, lose.

This means healthy conservatism needs to find ways to acceptably incorporate new ideas into itself, so that it doesn't become stagnant and brittle, so that it can improve rather than just kneejerk defend the borders; and healthy liberalism has to dig in and know when to fight like hell and not always play the glory of the "high road" politics which amounts to rolling over and taking more kicks to the back. It doesn't mean you need to go low road, but what ever happened to a middle common sense road? I always thought extremes were a luxury only kids could afford, and then when you engage the world, you learn how much more complex a situation can be and adjust accordingly. But extremes seem to be the only thing my culture engages in nowadays.

 

[Black Rose]

What Jenny is saying will make me go on another tangent. A deep Dark target (no just kidding). What Cog really hates are not Christians but conservatives and it so happens Conservatives like to read Bibles and then say they believe the stuff in there. Few can wrap their head around liberal Christians existence. In order for me to explain why Liberal like cog hates Christians, I must explain why liberals like cog Hate conservatives and forget that his view of the bible is just as wrong as there is.

First, we need to understandmoral foundations theory. There are five foundations.

1. care vs harm
2. fairness vs cheating
3. loyalty and ingroup vs betrayal
4. authority and respect vs subversion
5. sanctity and purity vs degradation

Liberal are high in attributes 1 and 2
Conservatives are high in all 5.

I will now use The Bible to interpret these moral foundations counter intuitively.

1. Forgive those that harm you.
2. Zacchaeus the tax collector repaid 4 fold those that he cheated.
3. Josephs Brothers betrayed him and sold him into slavery. Latter He forgave them and saved them from a famine.
4. Under a trick from his top adviser, the king of Babylon singed a law that all jew be killed. Ester at dinner revealed she was a jew and she and her uncle would be killed. The king ordered the adviser killed and signed a new law that the Jews fight back since no law once signed can be nullified.
5. Jesus. Only what comes out of a person can make a person unclean not what goes into a person. He said this when not washing his hands. He said this to show the spiritual heart matters more than the physical body to be clean. If a person has an unclean heart, everything that comes out of them is rotten even if all that goes in is clean.
5. When the prodigal son returned covered in pig filth the father ran and embraced him.

OK so now I am a dirty, dirty proselytizer now I think. Do not worry, I will tie this to why cog has the views he has.

What do the liberals want: care and fairness

What do conservative want that liberals do not care about?
Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity

Why does cog not care about these three things conservatives do?

Liberal brain activates the anterior cingulate cortex.
Conservative brains activate the insula and the right amygdala.

The ACC does executive control of error detection between signals competing for attention.

The amygdala is for social intelligence and threat awareness.
The insula is for body awareness and gut reactions.

Not to put it all together.

Cons have social awareness amygdala Loyalty, Authority. And gut reactions insula Sanctity.

Libs have care which is just normal distributed in all the brain. And fairness which the ACC is executive functioning so can calculate the fair share and cheating using error detection. As said before ACC understand competition so it knows fair competition when it sees it with the ACC attention mechanism.

Animekittys anterior cingulate cortex has been measured at an IQ of 135.

Conservatives want clean living spaces. Clear lines of leadership. And People they can trust. It is wrong to demonize this. Liberal wants rules that make sense for each person's needs and people should help out if they can. conservatives believe this too.

How Christianity is involved. God is the leader, purifies the believer and is the one you trust. He knows the needs of each person and he helps when he can.

Jenny said nuance.

Will conservatives start burning libraries down? More likely the feminists.

Just remember my words and be comforted by them. Capitalism wins then Science wins.

Everyone knows I do not hate any person or any group or any nationality or any people ethnicity race gender tribe clan or haplogroup.

Ideas are ideas and I know I said feminism and Islam but atheists say it and they say it about Christianity. I am not going to harass anyone by the standards of the staff on this forum. I only say what I think is true not what I think is the meanest thing to say because on the inside I am mean. I think that cog is wrong that things are worse. I think that cog will get his wish of technological immortality. I think that conservatives already have Trump and nothing happened. Would cog rather live in America or China. I have no answer myself. Unemployment in 2010 was 10% in 2018 it is 4%. Capitalism wins Science wins, Singularity Google Ray Kurzweil wins.

If anyone has anything to say please say it. Nothing bad will happen I promise. Look at the biology of libs and cons. What do you think? Wat about bible stuff. I need to know what the liberalism is? It does not die just because Trump is in office. Trump made Liberalism more popular. (confused and tired)

 

[washti]

In response to JennyWocky:
Believe systems are not built of one person. To sustain ideas your survival isn't crucial. Your views are not dying with you. You can preserve them in plethora mediums.
They can be destroyed only when you can't find anyone to be influenced by them, which is unlikely, given natural human limitation to come up with original ideas for social order. (Two-ended political spectrum – in a sense of idea's packages – goes back to ancient times and is constantly recycled with changing culture/tech or what have you as present driving force).

Believe systems promoting death as a virtue are not game losers. Martyr posture is a strong part of cultivating or ensuring the survival of ideas. Belief in national identity would be lost if not sacrifices of guerilla fighters, underground language's educators, and whistleblowers annihilated abroad.

People always wonder why this particular belief is so important for this group that someone is ready to risk life, disease, imprisonment or other self-inflicted constraints. Maybe it is something to it after all. This mind wondering can be often crucial for an acquisition of system's new crew members.

How many new disciples Islam gain and lose every year? The Muslim population is growing in Western Europe. Not only by immigration factor but by rising amount people who become converts. Now after the almost total defeat of ISIS, it's European fighters are coming back home and how do you think – will they give up their beliefs or start looking for supporters and in effect radicalize Muslim communities? Religious suicide and other personal sacrifices give Islam real weight. People who deem to criticize this ideology die too. Death is ultimate influence/power symbol if used this way.

And martyrdom is used by all belief structures no matter position on the left-right spectrum. (Nobel laureate, who died in 2017 in China prison, Navalny arrested now in Russia due to the upcoming presidential election, Mandela, this boy from Florida shooting who died to help others survive and now will be buried with military honors). Willingness to die speaks volume especially for those who are fascinated by ideology but don't actively participate in serving its expansion.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

The very problem with the contemporary "liberalism" is that it turned into an aggressive closed-minded religion, mostly originated in academic ivory towers. Another problem is that it became some strange mixture of Marxism and Liberalism, as is evident from the narrative in OP.

True Liberalism is about freedom of the individual and a free market economy. Nowadays, liberalism seems to imply state-imposed controls on distribution of wealth and a multicultural ideology.

Also, contemporary liberal intellectuals engage in their own sort of dogmas. In the old days, the intellectual dogma about outcome differences was genetics. Everything was explained in terms of biological differences. Now they have switched to a new dogma: all differences can be explained by oppression, external causes of which groups are victims.

 

[Cognisant]

I do think taxation needs to be more effective, it's no secret that there's people below and above the tax threshold, not to forget exploitative fraudulent organizations exploiting their tax free status.

Imo the SJW crowd is anything but liberal, they're out to enforce a neurotic kind of entitlement, the SJW "feminists" complaining about man-spreading are parasites to the actual women's rights movement.

I was raised by unionists but I'm an industrialist at heart and seeing all this money go to waste while important aspects of governance like education, healthcare and infrastructure development falls to the wayside upsets me deeply. I'm not a bleeding heart for the poor or a social activist fighting to undo social stratification for equality's sake, I want a strong government that has the wealth to spend on things like particle accelerators, space programs, research grants for robotics and AI, y'know the things I care about.

A sick country with a weak government achieves nothing.

 

[Kuu]

The passivity of liberalism (lowercase) is due to fundamental distortions. One cannot have real liberty without some degree of conflict, and it is the very need to negotiate conflicts that gives rise to law and states. But when such structures are wielded as hammers to oppress for the sake of a superficial peace, that is not an enabler of liberty, but rather its complete antithesis, and the originator of violence against the individual as well as the groups. A liberal is therefore justified in a reactionary self defense.

That's all well and good, most would say. Indeed a lot of people will say and attempt to prove that therefore there is no liberalist passivity, that they are fighting for it constantly. Except that most people don't understand shit about power and from where it originates, so they are easily led by the nose by the soothsayers and puppeteers behind the curtains, barking up the wrong trees, shooting themselves in the feet, friendly fire massacre in the fog of war, happy to let off a bit of steam and call it action rather than face the reality of how futile and mediocre their actions are. To face such truth requires a strong person that will not break down and prostate himself in defeat when comprehending the vast and odious depth of their enslavement, and the lengths still to go and sacrifices to be done in order to escape it. In short, people are (or rather have been rendered) too stupid, lazy, distracted and weak to effectively work towards strengthening Liberalism. Efforts abound, amounting often to little more than noise and wasted energy.

We don't have much actual statesmen doing the governing. Can you sense the intense longing for good role models to admire, a stout helmsman to steer us, a big brother to help us? Cravings arise because of their absence. There are few people that actually have civilizational human interests in their minds. Liberalism has been deliberately weaponized (and thus degraded) by the unscrupulous tyrants that wish to enslave us. People are just confused now because media-entertainment-education complex provides such a spectacle of illusion that dazes an distracts from the fact the corporate oligarchy is grinding us to dust in their lawless libertinage. As much as snowflakes and dinosaurs are obnoxious, they are but the sheep rounding each other up for the slaughter, and not themselves the wolves.

Spoiler

I don't know what else is left to discuss, no sane individual would adhere to either extreme of the infantile false ideological dichotomy being peddled ceaselessly in public discourse these days. The window of acceptable opinions is quite narrow, indeed we are in a vice grip that seems near unescapable. The economic system has enslaved us (that much most can agree with) and the mass media prevents our coordination against it (the hydra of modern banking cannot be slain by a single hand). Any productive conversation about our future must necessarily start with plans to break either chain: that which constrains the mind, and that which constrains the body.

 

[Black Rose]

The only thing to do Kuu is work towards self-interest. Does it benefit Kuu to be part of the INTP forum community more than it does than to be a sheep and believe in a mindless bureaucracy than share ideas and strengthen an intellectual group that can and has influenced society significantly? Interconnectivity is in my self-interest to be like Socrates and spark the lights in the minds of everyone I can. The book gave us the train, the electric lights then the car, computers, internet, soon intelligent software. I have studied this from age 12. So liberalism you ask is fighting the machine of the relations of powers of control and distraction. This is a dander to my rights. But I am an intellectual. The intellectuals Kuu have always known this. The moral ones anyway. So is Plato moral in the republic. The republic is the cave Kuu. This means the intellectuals cannot free people by becoming workers by going back to the cave. Who makes the shadows, who made the chains. Why does cold fusion not explain why the machines still need the humans in pods to pow the machine city. Liberalism is about protecting rights. If that is so then the republic needs the people to be smart the republic need machines that work for us not put us in the cave, the pods. I am not sure Kuu but I say that if you see what I put here on the forum. It is intellectual and many see it and a stochastic effect happens just by lurkers get ideas, like smart people that can build physics engines from scratch. The world is becoming more a cybernetic feedback system Kuu and people if not intellectuals become smarter and can protect rights better. Think Google Star Trek Computer. And Singularity stuff. It is not so bad as all that because powerlessness in the face of the Leviathan does not truly capture stochastic decentralization of my powers. Claude Shannon Entropy helps us defeat noise in a computer by redundant error correction. Protecting my rights is as simple as making people smarter by talking to them. then let the butterfly effect take its course.

 

[Yellow]

Functionally, the middle class all looks pretty much the same so they all effectively believe pretty much the same things.

If this conversation was supposed to be about the US, our populace is comically polarized.

As to the middle class in the US, it's the most polarized group I see. I assume this is because they represent the widest array of education.

 

[QuickTwist]

If this conversation was supposed to be about the US, our populace is comically polarized.

As to the middle class in the US, it's the most polarized group I see. I assume this is because they represent the widest array of education.

Just because people argue doesn't mean they really believe anything different.

I am a firm believer that what you do is what you believe. If you want to disagree with me that's where you should start.

 

[Cognisant]

The economic system has enslaved us (that much most can agree with) and the mass media prevents our coordination against it (the hydra of modern banking cannot be slain by a single hand). Any productive conversation about our future must necessarily start with plans to break either chain: that which constrains the mind, and that which constrains the body.

I suppose it starts with raising awareness of the fact that democracy has failed, that governments whilst beholden to the vested interests of various corporations and industries are no longer serving the people, we must demand that either our governments retake control or if they are too weak to do so we will have to overthrow them and establish new governance.

 

[Yellow]

Just because people argue doesn't mean they really believe anything different.

I am a firm believer that what you do is what you believe. If you want to disagree with me that's where you should start.

While I find it odd you'd dictate how others will interact with you on subjects, I suppose it is an easy place to start.

What the middle class do is quite diverse. Since this is the only class in which you can count on people defining themselves by occupation, they are most easily broken down by career field, ordered from most liberal to most conservative in vote and lifestyle (and spoilered for everyone else's sanity)

Spoiler

There are the service providers. This large group of people who make a meager-to-modest living serving the community (educators, nurses, first responders, counselors, pastors, etc.) their views tend to sympathize with the populations they serve. Those serving the poverty class have political views that tend to favor (but rarely match, ironically) what's best for the poor. Those serving the middle-upper tend to be less generous in their views. Of course, there are more people in poverty to serve than there are wealthy. You will see more advocates for social progress and welfare among this group than the others.

There are the less-than-lucrative lawyers, doctors, real-estate agents, bankers, etc. There are more of these folk than you think, and their votes, opinions, and lifestyles can vary significantly. For every successful lawyer, for example, I'd venture to guess that there are ten who passed the bar, but make about what I do. Some are bitter about being passed over in their careers. Some are burnt out on the system (think, big blob of apathy, case after case), some are completely disgusted with it, and take lower pay for better sleep. I'd lump this whole group in with service providers, as far as disillusionment rates go, but I know people would balk.

Then there are those without any particular education or trade. They are McDonald's store managers. They've worked at the same bank for 15 years. They worked or charmed their way into the best bar-tending shifts, or the best dancing nights. They work in government call centers. Economically, these people are middle class. Socially, it depends. Is this a single mother from Detroit? Is this a young man who never left the job he had in high school? Their political views and lifestyles are going to be wildly different.

I don't want to forget the everyday IT personnel, the hairdressers, chefs, and auto mechanics who learned a trade, and again, can have wildly different opinions and lifestyles. Some may have used public services, and support their continuation. Some have always had a solid support system, and they don't understand what it's like to be hungry or marginalized.

There are the skilled laborers, whose views tend to vary with their working conditions. For example, my father was a high-voltage electrician working the shipyards in the 1980's. He witnessed the deaths of dozens of colleagues at the hands of their employers because it was either "work here, or fucking starve". He worked 60-80 hours a week, placing us firmly in the lower-middle class bracket. There are a ton of these men and women walking among the middle class. Some know that fear-mongering is a control tactic, some don't. Some support unionization, for example, and some don't (though the vast majority seem to support the end of over-seas labor exploitation, which is why so many literally blue-collar Americans insist on us buying American products). However, those who wear their bodies out to make a living do tend to be less generous economically and socially than other tradespeople. I can't say I blame them.

There are the small merchants (the inheritors, the entrepreneurs, and the bumblers). These usually favor whatever they believe makes it easier for their business (which is very much a part of themselves) to function. Their opinions tend to follow their incomes and their economic education (because conservative economics kill small business faster than anything, but mom-and-pop owners ignorant to the subject seem first to fall prey to conservative pedagogues).

Then you have the last group of middle class (that I can think of), which are military and paramilitary (cops, federal agents, correctional/probation officers, etc.). This large group of middle class folk can be counted on to contain a conservative majority.

I think there are only two things that really unite the middle class.

A) mortal fear of joining the poverty class. This stems from "middle class values", which have their origins in Calvinism. Basically, "you earn your lot in life". Inherently flawed, of course, but how people internalize that value runs the gambit.

B) many are too busy just trying to get through the day to care about everything. Most people take a few political things to care about, and say fuck-it to the rest.

 

[Black Rose]

But cog? The people are the gov. How do you get the people to go against the corporations? We kill the corps that are already most deadly. And the ones that still exist? If people don't care then nothing can be done. You expect fight club the movie to destroy Google and gov destroy the internet. Fat chance.

edit

I mean awareness is little because people are invested in the system.

 

[Black Rose]

I mean awareness is little because people are invested in the system.

 

[Pyropyro]

I suppose it starts with raising awareness of the fact that democracy has failed, that governments whilst beholden to the vested interests of various corporations and industries are no longer serving the people, we must demand that either our governments retake control or if they are too weak to do so we will have to overthrow them and establish new governance.

Ah raising awareness, people's cop out to actually getting things done. If you want the answer to passivity then raising awareness is your answer.

Liberals are no different than the religious people that you despise. They just peddle different ideals.

So what do u expect to replace democracy with?

On what grounds would you demand a weak gov to surrender? Do you have an army to fight them? Money to burn? Or will you bomb them will impotent thoughts and prayers hashtags?

 

[QuickTwist]

While I find it odd you'd dictate how others will interact with you on subjects, I suppose it is an easy place to start.

What the middle class do is quite diverse. Since this is the only class in which you can count on people defining themselves by occupation, they are most easily broken down by career field, ordered from most liberal to most conservative in vote and lifestyle (and spoilered for everyone else's sanity)

Spoiler

There are the service providers. This large group of people who make a meager-to-modest living serving the community (educators, nurses, first responders, counselors, pastors, etc.) their views tend to sympathize with the populations they serve. Those serving the poverty class have political views that tend to favor (but rarely match, ironically) what's best for the poor. Those serving the middle-upper tend to be less generous in their views. Of course, there are more people in poverty to serve than there are wealthy. You will see more advocates for social progress and welfare among this group than the others.

There are the less-than-lucrative lawyers, doctors, real-estate agents, bankers, etc. There are more of these folk than you think, and their votes, opinions, and lifestyles can vary significantly. For every successful lawyer, for example, I'd venture to guess that there are ten who passed the bar, but make about what I do. Some are bitter about being passed over in their careers. Some are burnt out on the system (think, big blob of apathy, case after case), some are completely disgusted with it, and take lower pay for better sleep. I'd lump this whole group in with service providers, as far as disillusionment rates go, but I know people would balk.

Then there are those without any particular education or trade. They are McDonald's store managers. They've worked at the same bank for 15 years. They worked or charmed their way into the best bar-tending shifts, or the best dancing nights. They work in government call centers. Economically, these people are middle class. Socially, it depends. Is this a single mother from Detroit? Is this a young man who never left the job he had in high school? Their political views and lifestyles are going to be wildly different.

I don't want to forget the everyday IT personnel, the hairdressers, chefs, and auto mechanics who learned a trade, and again, can have wildly different opinions and lifestyles. Some may have used public services, and support their continuation. Some have always had a solid support system, and they don't understand what it's like to be hungry or marginalized.

There are the skilled laborers, whose views tend to vary with their working conditions. For example, my father was a high-voltage electrician working the shipyards in the 1980's. He witnessed the deaths of dozens of colleagues at the hands of their employers because it was either "work here, or fucking starve". He worked 60-80 hours a week, placing us firmly in the lower-middle class bracket. There are a ton of these men and women walking among the middle class. Some know that fear-mongering is a control tactic, some don't. Some support unionization, for example, and some don't (though the vast majority seem to support the end of over-seas labor exploitation, which is why so many literally blue-collar Americans insist on us buying American products). However, those who wear their bodies out to make a living do tend to be less generous economically and socially than other tradespeople. I can't say I blame them.

There are the small merchants (the inheritors, the entrepreneurs, and the bumblers). These usually favor whatever they believe makes it easier for their business (which is very much a part of themselves) to function. Their opinions tend to follow their incomes and their economic education (because conservative economics kill small business faster than anything, but mom-and-pop owners ignorant to the subject seem first to fall prey to conservative pedagogues).

Then you have the last group of middle class (that I can think of), which are military and paramilitary (cops, federal agents, correctional/probation officers, etc.). This large group of middle class folk can be counted on to contain a conservative majority.

I think there are only two things that really unite the middle class.

A) mortal fear of joining the poverty class. This stems from "middle class values", which have their origins in Calvinism. Basically, "you earn your lot in life". Inherently flawed, of course, but how people internalize that value runs the gambit.

B) many are too busy just trying to get through the day to care about everything. Most people take a few political things to care about, and say fuck-it to the rest.

I was aware that people have different "careers" but my point remains the same. You said what the two things that the middle class have in common. I think you greatly underestimate how powerful these things manifest themselves in people.

In short, my point is that I do not see people actually doing something about their supposed beliefs. I see a lot of people talking about their beliefs but I see very little action to spur on defending or advocating for their beliefs in a tangible way. Talk is cheap; just because someone says they believe something this isn't the same thing as actually believing something different from the supposed opposing side. I realize what I am saying is an incredibly zoomed out meta argument.

I think people see these minor differences and get caught up on thinking these things mean there are more differences than similarities. My point is that this is not the case and that people are actually remarkably similar to each other when you measure for socioeconomic status. The people that are the most different from their own socioeconomic status are the people at the top. That is where the real difference is show in how people operate. Reason for this is that to be successful, you must do something different than the bulk of other people. What this difference is, is the effort felt of the follow through of what that person is doing that is a true representation of the uniqueness that individual strives for, which is necessary given that the success of an individual is a demonstration that that person is being true to themselves. Because they are closer to their full potential, they have fulfilled more of what makes themselves unique from everyone else. The reason for this is that in order to be fulfilled as a person, you have to listen to your interests - what you really care about. Once you find out what you actually care about, when you follow through with the interests that are unique to yourself, you become successful. In this way, very few people are actually successful because very few people are actually true to themselves.

That is my theory anyways.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

I suppose it starts with raising awareness of the fact that democracy has failed, that governments whilst beholden to the vested interests of various corporations and industries are no longer serving the people, we must demand that either our governments retake control or if they are too weak to do so we will have to overthrow them and establish new governance.

The problem here is that this exact philosophy is what lead to the current situation in the first place. When you give a centralized authority the power to enforce far-reaching regulations and dictate economic activity, you create an incentive for corporations and politics to become entangeled. Corporations start lobbying for regulations that benefit them and so on. The remedy is to give the state less power, not more.

Ultimately, I don't understand how your OP is about the passivity of liberalism when what you actually want - a big, powerful state - is the very antithesis to liberalism.

 

[Black Rose]

@Serac distraction is a power relation. in evolution the method of power is reproduction. So too in capitalism is production so worker must obey. The system has oil, energy, eating. Some have more money, energy than others. What do the people do in order to not die. Revolution. And when they do not die. No Revolution. Instead. Homeostasis and consumption consumer capitalism. Hot Topic stores. Invader Zim Gir hoodies.

Cog says corporations bad. Why? Blacks bad? Asians Bad? Because of they take away Liberal values? Is Cog racists? Gir loves tacos. The Green dog loves tacos. He (Cog) not understand the system. First, he says religion want to kill our rights now he says corporations that give Gir tocos kills our rights. Cog is under mind control that he does not understand the mind control. Cog must paradigm shift. The SJW's are retards but postmodernism has some truth to it. Reality as consensus reality has power. it is not just about Science the Rationalist paradigm Dawkins and Neil Degrasse Tyson fall under. Cog backed down on religion because he saw a bigger threat. Corporations. But now I tell you that mind control is bigger and I tell you that unless you reach the level of toco Cog, you cannot see the biggest picture of all that the green robot dog Gir sees. meta-postmodernism.

 

[Cognisant]

Cog backed down on religion

NEVER! I was merely distracted.
When I bring myself to focus on shitting on religion it'll need its own thread.

Ultimately, I don't understand how your OP is about the passivity of liberalism when what you actually want - a big, powerful state - is the very antithesis to liberalism.

Y'know what you're right, you're absolutely right, I'm not a liberal.
What am I... *googles* a Marxist maybe? no...

The problem here is that this exact philosophy is what lead to the current situation in the first place. When you give a centralized authority the power to enforce far-reaching regulations and dictate economic activity, you create an incentive for corporations and politics to become entangeled. Corporations start lobbying for regulations that benefit them and so on. The remedy is to give the state less power, not more.

Are you an NRA member?

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Are you an NRA member?

I'm in Scandinavia, dude. I have never even seen a gun.

 

[Cognisant]

I'm a big fan of automation, it's my favorite thing, but I definitely see a problem with automation when it comes to the free market system. When profits are abstracted away from the work performed to achieve them there can be a great inequality between those who do the work and those who own the means of production (including intellectual property). Now that being said I'm not a fan of communism or any kind of non-market socialism, the administrative overhead is just too high. One can't help but admire the self regulating dynamics of supply & demand and the free market system is nothing if not adaptable, that adaptability is its greatest strength.

If we see this as a scale of market freedom with communism on one end and totally unregulated free market capitalism at the other we see each end of the scale has some serious flaws. Communism requires an authority to constantly arbitrate the relative value of goods and services which forces a simplification of the market or else the authority is simply overwhelmed by the complexity of its task. Free market capitalism has no administrative overhead but in such an anarchistic system exploitation is inevitable and regulators will emerge to fill the vacuum of power left by the absence of authority, i.e. cyberpunk megacorporations.

I think there needs to be a balance of freedom and regulation which is in theory the nature of the current system, we have authorities that moderate the market to prevent exploitation and when it works well it works well for everyone. The authorities enforce intellectual property rights, protect against fraud and theft, a government regulated market is stable and stability is good for business.

I think the problems that we have are that there's no international authority, everybody knows multinational companies are abusing national taxation systems by juggling their stock through proxy companies. Another problem is that politicians clearly aren't being properly incentivized to put the good of their nation before personal gain, I think we should pay them more (a value that is a multiplication of the minimum wage) and have harsher penalties for corruption and conflicts of interest, make it so that someone can become a successful businessman or a successful politician but not both.

 

[Black Rose]

 

[QuickTwist]

@Kuu ,

Why not use the media as a platform to lead? Why would that not work? You won't get everyone that way, but you will get enough people to pay attention to you to make a difference. I think Jordan Peterson is making a lot of headway in this kind of endeavor. He's definitely someone worth paying attention to. His message is essentially personal responsibility. I cannot see a flaw in this approach.

Would like to hear your thoughts on this.