When the agonies of war meet the fantasies that feed culture, what comes out the other side? As tragedy unfolds in Ukraine, like many I’ve been trying to understand the complex ways in which cultural psychologies clash, and how this leads to shifts in the world order.
Your summation about feeling the pain really resonants for me. Typical human nature (in Western culture anyway) is about escaping emotional pain – in myriad ways.
As an emotions therapist, I see people burying their pain as it is too intense to fully experience the awareness and release of it. But as you indicate, if we can learn how to experience pain, "it can bring us back to our bodies and our compassion."
Of course, feeling our feelings – especially when they're painful – is a spiritual process that nurtures relationship with our deep Inner Knowing. It is hard but from this place springs all the good stuff – love, peace, kindness to serve the evolution of consciousness leading to personal and social transformation.
Pain is ubiquitous and inevitable. Life is periods of calm between painful crises. People screw up wasting the periods of calm lamenting the previous pain while ignoring the fact that the next pain crises will be here soon enough.
The Fermi Paradox keeps reducing the odds that other intelligent life exists in the universe. We may be it. That being the case that average four twenties and change is truly precious. And pain is part of the gift of life in this form. These thoughts shape my personal philosophy and cause me to always seek the sun and green grass in periods of pain where darkness would otherwise envelop me.
I lived a long time believing that I had to endure emotional suffering – however no longer. I have learned (and teach) that difficult emotions such as anxiety, shame, self-doubt, loneliness, anger, grief, etc, hold the potential to help process and release the painful feeling and the trauma that underpins it. The most effective tool I've encountered to catalyze this release is breathwork (often amplified with the judicious use of plant medicines but that's another story). We can use breathwork to tone our nervous system, which strengthens our resolve to be with a triggering emotion while heightening the awareness to know what we're feeling. Profound healing can happen in this event and one no longer has to live from painful crisis to painful crisis. Learning this skill builds emotional resiliency and our capacity to be in the flow.
Mar 31, 2022·edited Mar 31, 2022Liked by Alexander Beiner
I discovered NS a while back and have really enjoyed his writings, glad to see him interviewed here...his 'black pill' essay on why Wokeism is just getting started was also a real reality check for me...some of the best bloggers such as NS Lyon and Doomberg and in a previous life Mencius Moldbug are written under a nom de plume
it is the alliance between digital capitalism and the “Brahmins” (in their presently constituted form) that has created the foundation of the rising sectors of the ruling class. Additionally, these sectors have only become as hegemonic as they have in part because of their alliance with the traditional northeastern financial establishment (the Hamiltonian banking elites whom Yarvin praises). The traditional financial establishment faced an intra-ruling class challenge during the late 20th century from the insurgent Sunbelt industries that emerged in the postwar period (whose political frontmen were figures like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich). But the northeastern financial establishment has been able to launch a largely successful counterattack through its alliance with digital capitalism against traditional industrial capitalism and with the Brahmins against the sinking traditional middle class to upper-middle class (Chamber of Commerce types, small capital, the petite bourgeoisie, etc.).
The Brahmins that Yarvin claims to oppose have been empowered primarily by the rise of digital capitalism and the traditional financial establishment. Additionally, the “woke” ideology (what I call “totalitarian humanism”) that presently constitutes the self-legitimating ideological superstructure of the ruling class is not the sole creation of the Brahmins alone.
[->] Every ideological superstructure has a materialist base and class base
(which in the case of totalitarian humanism would be digital capital, the tech revolution, “financialization” of the kind that has emerged from neoliberalism, the expanded technocratic class which is the product of the wider degree of specialization and the division of labor rooted in increased technological sophistication).
Additionally, “wokeness” is rooted in the wider infrastructure of statecraft which can be traced, at the irreducible minimum, to the collusion between the Frankfurt School and the OSS during WW2, followed by the CIA’s creation of the Congress of Cultural Freedom in the 1950s. While elements of the ideological framework of totalitarian humanism may have their roots in the cultural revolution of the 1960s/1970s, in its present form “wokeness” represents a co-optation of those cultural patterns by the liberal wing of the capitalist class (a specific strategy that was devised by Fred Dutton as far back as 1970). The insurgent sectors of the managerial class (primarily the expanded professional class and rising middle-class sectors among traditional outgroups) became the socioeconomic foundation for this co-optation, which allowed
[->] the liberal wing of capitalism to marginalize labor unions
while cultivating these rising middle-class sectors as a replacement constituency for the traditional working class.
It appears that Yarvin wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to purge the Brahmins and their influence, but maintain the apparatus of the state, capital, and empire which is the source of the Brahmins’ empowerment and, once again, of which Yarvin himself is a part. For example, Yarvin completely ignores the relationship between the Brahmins and the state security and intelligence forces (as evidenced by the “Russiagate” hysteria). He also ignores the adoption of the Brahmin ideology even by the conventional military at the present time, and by the majority of the financial, industrial, and technological elites. Nor does Yarvin recognize
[->] the role of the financial oligarchy in maintaining the propaganda apparatus of the ruling class,
including the Murdoch mouthpiece FOX (which is also partially owned by Black Rock) and which conducted this interview with Yarvin.
Purging the leadership of Yale and Harvard or MSNBC and CNN (itself a good idea), while retaining the leadership of (for example) Facebook, Wells Fargo, Goldman-Sachs, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Koch Industries, Black Rock, State Street, Vanguard, Exxon-Mobil, AIPAC, the FBI, or the CIA to name only a few would be the biggest waste of time ever.
Moldbug, really? Real name Curtis Yarvin, who wrote "although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff". Yeah, sure: seems to me that he's a white supremicist who's just a little too cowardly to say so openly. Oh, and he thinks monarchy is the ideal political system.
Ugh. Yarvin's still writing. He's on substack now -- I won't link to him though. What a great example of sharp critical faculties gone horribly wrong in the grip of a taboo counter-narrative. I do hope Lyons doesn't end up like that.
I think Goodhart's duality is actually cross-class: it spans shire Tories and working class communities. So it's really the socially (ultra)liberal vs the socially conservative.
A very timely observation about pain given our nation's avoidance and obsession with it--the "painkiller" epidemic that sparked the opiate epidemic--all in the name of "pain management." Growth often requires pain, any athlete knows this, but we have seemed to have forgotten it.
Far too much emphasis here on deep analysis and finer detail. Step back and take a look around you. Too many people, too much greed, too much selfishness and too much arrogance - equals lots of squabbling. People need to reconnect with the land, the wildlife, where their food comes from and the processes and life forms necessary for it to grow - that is what's real. The myriad of mental illnesses, among which is transgenderism and wokeism is symptomatic of our loss of connection with reality. It's simple, not complicated, no need for intellectual analysis. The problem which blocks the solution is the fact that there are now too many of us (especially in the UK where we now have only have enough useable land to feed 40 - 50% of our population without importing food) to be able to do this successfully.
Interesting piece. I have recently subscribed to NS Lyons and have enjoyed his insights and writing. Being a surgeon I am a somewhere and a “real” but in a higher socioeconomic class. I certainly identify and sympathize with other somewhere/real groups. I am a nationalist/populist as well.
And I'm impressed that the aspect of the disassociated Western psyche is finally getting discussed around virtual vs physical societies.
This is to my mind is a big part of it for the Russians. Dugin has written about how he sees the Western "end-game" looking - transhumanist, AI-integrated part-humans, in inflammatory tones. I think he has some good points and I think it's valid to consider that Westerners themselves may be incapable of controlling what they have created.
Under psychological pressure, Westerners tend to dissociate from the body and inhabit a thought-dominated world. This has enabled us to create some amazing techie stuff. But I think it's good to recognise the role of dissociation here in forwarding Western culture. It's really not all sweetness and light.
Slavs, on the other hand, under the same stressors tend to internalise the wounding, holding it in.
I believe the difference between the Western intellectual mind and the minds of other races is coming to the fore and beginning to dominate geopolitics.
Nice interview but I'm surprised no reference was made to the US intervention in Ukraine. From what I've read there is ample reason for Putin to defend Russia from Globohomo decadence and proxy chaos and violence.
Putin's Duginist, anti-western attitude has been explained by all sorts of people pro/con, including those influenced by the "western self-loathing" syndrome:
And the (pro-Western) advocates for the idea that Russia is on the other "side" of the fault line that forms the "clash of civilizations": the "classically liberal" west and the ILLIBERAL east with its "asiastic hordes".
Zelinsky made a statement a few days ago about how he wants Ukraine to become like Israel, a militarized outpost on the frontier of the clash of civilizations.
Alexander, if you enjoyed Weird, you should check out Culture Hacks by Richard Conrad to get a better understanding of the subtler and not so subtle cultural differences between the Chinese and West.
Henrich references the early Church's ban on cousin marriage, which was an attempt to destroy or diminish the power of clannish social forms so that the establishment of the supranational role of the Church could proceed, as the crucial difference.
Henrich doesn't make clear the controversial fact that the early Church's ban on cousin marriage within clans turned NW Europe's gene pool from being inbred to outbred. The nuclear family and outbreeding increased genetic variability, including higher incidence of "liberal" personality traits and once the urban commoner classes began to expand along with increased river and sea trade (and windmills and printing presses), higher literacy, numeracy and IQ.
The Chinese gene pool is higher IQ because, as Ron Unz explained, the Chinese system of meritocratic bureaucracy (and polygamy by the rich, authoritarian bureaucrats) ensured that the poorest 20% of males never got the chance to marry and reproduce. But the high IQ Chinese authoritarian gene pool is not "liberal" in the western sense.
A very timely observation about pain given our nation's avoidance of and obsession with it. Lest we not forget that the "painkiller" epidemic (that sparked the opiate epidemic) was a result of a paradigm shift in modern medicine and the rise of "pain management." Growth often requires pain, any athlete knows this, but we have seemed to have forgotten it. After the Cold War, in the west, the multinational corporate state overthrew the sovereign nation state in a bloodless coup and the leaders of the new corporate state declared the playing field level. Anti-trust laws, unions, banking rules, workers’ safety regulations, and environmental protection, were deemed outdated and unnecessary hindrances to “the free market.” The politicians they owned and their mandarins in the press agreed. Increasingly overweight westerners flocked to warehouses full of cheap food, generic clothes, disposable furniture, and electronic distractions, most of it made in foreign sweatshops. Soon everyone had 500 channels, giant flat screens, and streaming porn. As long as the rich had cocaine, Cialis, Concerta, and Oxy, and the poor had crack, smack, and crystal, nobody seemed to notice the greatest consolidation of wealth in human history. Had Marx lived long enough to witness this strip mining phase of capitalism, he would have called it laissez-faire anarchy. In the end, these vast accumulations of wealth enervated the west’s transnational ruling class. Not only did they grow complacent and self-congratulatory, but their belief that the rules of geopolitics no longer applied led to strategic shortsightedness and imperial overstretch.
“the link between cultural cognition and geopolitical shifts.”
“ Morris ultimately makes the argument that it was a combination of good fortune and environmental factors that saw the West industrialise first and dominate the East.”
These two comments resonate as somewhat contradictory. And I also see them as representing a key difference in worldview that transcends geopolitics. Culture does matter not only as represented in outcomes as measured globally, but also domestically and individually. The US began its industrial revolution before the great wars. The culture embodied by The Idea that was contained in our founding documents of governance was the secret sauce that rocketed economic growth. The focus on rights of the divine individual rather than the fairness of the divine collective unleashed the creative entrepreneurial power and gave economic access to Everyman if he wanted it bad enough and would hard work and dogged persistence. It also caused men to “play chess” in politics as well as business. Unfortunately it has resulted in a corruption of corporatism today that is allowing geopolitical looting on a massive scale… but there are chess games to be played to fix it.
Also English has been the best language supporting business. It developed that way.
Ethiopia has always had abundant natural resources but it’s people have starved for centuries. Find any Spanish speaking Latin cultures that you would claim work well. Culture matters.
And the woke project is attempting to throw that baby out with the bath water. We need a civil rights renewal chess game to fix that.
There isn't any contradiction. See Gerhard Lenski on the relationship between environment and material factors in cultural evolution.
Walter Russell Mead brilliantly pointed out that many of the historical successes of the anglo-american West were accidental in their origins. The Dutch "invented" capitalism (which Mead calls the "ugly daughter of a rich man" in his book "God and Gold") on the foundation of the Hanseatic League, but since the British Isles are just isolated enough to be mostly free of the continental wars, Anglo-capitalism flourished relative to Dutch capitalism.
Both became cosmopolitan, but Anglo-capitalism was more ascendant because of the historical accident of being located on an island.
Mead cites the openness of capitalism (which is seen by most of the world as un-religious, un-spiritual, and thus an "ugly daughter") as one of the great accidents of historical success, but its tendency toward "missionary" schemes to want to spread liberalism to cultures and gene pools that are hostile to it.
These is no "accident" in the American Great experiment in that its design most correctly matches the basic psychology of the individual and best harnesses and exploits fundamental human behavior.
I have a general aversion to the argument from academics that something profound accomplished outside of their academic pursuits is labeled an accident. I always suspect some deductive agenda... and it is common from those that continue to push the collectivist alternative... as if the opposition to that ideology is fragile as it was just stumbled over and is prone to easy breaking. The opposite is the truth. The system of individual rights and liberty... one that supports and protects the personal pursuit of interests... it is the natural foundation of human existence that all other systems attempt to thwart and control with great misery and suffering.
They beat the Spanish, French, Germans, Russians and spread their "modern rationalist" culture and market economic system almost everywhere on the planet, including many places that were horrified by classical liberalism and democracy.
If "working well" is defined as being better able to compete historically, the evidence is obvious and overwhelming.
A case can be made that the worse thing about Anglo-capitalism is its failure to completely eliminate the tendency toward "oriental despotism" and empire building, but the reality of human cultural evolution is that empires of some kind always temporarily prevail, or they have at least since the end of the ice and stone ages ages (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas, Islam, etc.)
Bolivar famously understood the problem of cultural evolution and the futility of attempting to impose liberalism and democracy on inbred tribal cultures that were absent the industrial economy and genetic and cultural pre-requisites for democracy and liberalism:
Post-independence regression to class, race and tribal wars, and Caudillismo
Vd. sabe que yo he mandado veinte años y de ellos no he sacado más que pocos resultados ciertos:
[] 1º) La [latin] América es ingobernable para nosotros.
[] 2º) El que sirve una revolución ara en el mar.
[] 3º) La única cosa que se puede hacer en [latin] América es emigrar.
[--->] 4º) Este país caerá infaliblemente en manos de la multitud desenfrenada, para después pasar a tiranuelos casi imperceptibles, de to dos colores y razas.
[] 5º) devorados por todos los crímenes y extinguidos por la ferocidad, los europeos no se dignarán conquistarnos.
[] 6º) Si fuera posible que una parte del mundo volviera al caos primitivo, éste sería el último periodo de la [latin] América...
Postmodern "green meme" relativism and pluralism is at a stage of self-loathing and victim narratives. Within the integral theory community Ken Wilber has argued for decades that the "mean green meme" (MGM) is grossly inadequate as the basis of reaching the next stage of cultural evolution because it is incapable of "transcending and including" the "partial truths" of earlier, mythic and modern-rationalist paradigms.
Wilber says MGM is reactionary and regressive. There is copious evidence for that in the bizarre antics of the "cultural left", postmodern neomarxism, etc.
I recognise myself in this avoidance of pain by (in my case) railing against everyone’s emotional reactions to Ukraine’s incredible defence when all I want is for the killing to stop. As a breach event it feels now that I have merely been wishing the war away because it pulls a rug from under me that’s been there since my birth.
Also, as a member of the intra-Beltway "foreign policy establishment", N.S. really ought to show better acquaintance with subject matter authorities like John Mearshimer, regarding Ukraine. Major omissions of basic facts like the 2014 color revolution, the Hunter Biden / Rosemont Seneca money laundering operation, etc. greatly diminish the credibility of the analysis.
Your summation about feeling the pain really resonants for me. Typical human nature (in Western culture anyway) is about escaping emotional pain – in myriad ways.
As an emotions therapist, I see people burying their pain as it is too intense to fully experience the awareness and release of it. But as you indicate, if we can learn how to experience pain, "it can bring us back to our bodies and our compassion."
Of course, feeling our feelings – especially when they're painful – is a spiritual process that nurtures relationship with our deep Inner Knowing. It is hard but from this place springs all the good stuff – love, peace, kindness to serve the evolution of consciousness leading to personal and social transformation.
Right on: "... seeds are held in this pain."
Pain is ubiquitous and inevitable. Life is periods of calm between painful crises. People screw up wasting the periods of calm lamenting the previous pain while ignoring the fact that the next pain crises will be here soon enough.
The Fermi Paradox keeps reducing the odds that other intelligent life exists in the universe. We may be it. That being the case that average four twenties and change is truly precious. And pain is part of the gift of life in this form. These thoughts shape my personal philosophy and cause me to always seek the sun and green grass in periods of pain where darkness would otherwise envelop me.
I lived a long time believing that I had to endure emotional suffering – however no longer. I have learned (and teach) that difficult emotions such as anxiety, shame, self-doubt, loneliness, anger, grief, etc, hold the potential to help process and release the painful feeling and the trauma that underpins it. The most effective tool I've encountered to catalyze this release is breathwork (often amplified with the judicious use of plant medicines but that's another story). We can use breathwork to tone our nervous system, which strengthens our resolve to be with a triggering emotion while heightening the awareness to know what we're feeling. Profound healing can happen in this event and one no longer has to live from painful crisis to painful crisis. Learning this skill builds emotional resiliency and our capacity to be in the flow.
I discovered NS a while back and have really enjoyed his writings, glad to see him interviewed here...his 'black pill' essay on why Wokeism is just getting started was also a real reality check for me...some of the best bloggers such as NS Lyon and Doomberg and in a previous life Mencius Moldbug are written under a nom de plume
Keith Preston (heterodox sociologist) on Yarvin:
https://attackthesystem.com/2021/12/06/curtis-yarvin-mencius-moldbug-on-tucker-carlson-today-09-08-21/
excerpt:
it is the alliance between digital capitalism and the “Brahmins” (in their presently constituted form) that has created the foundation of the rising sectors of the ruling class. Additionally, these sectors have only become as hegemonic as they have in part because of their alliance with the traditional northeastern financial establishment (the Hamiltonian banking elites whom Yarvin praises). The traditional financial establishment faced an intra-ruling class challenge during the late 20th century from the insurgent Sunbelt industries that emerged in the postwar period (whose political frontmen were figures like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich). But the northeastern financial establishment has been able to launch a largely successful counterattack through its alliance with digital capitalism against traditional industrial capitalism and with the Brahmins against the sinking traditional middle class to upper-middle class (Chamber of Commerce types, small capital, the petite bourgeoisie, etc.).
The Brahmins that Yarvin claims to oppose have been empowered primarily by the rise of digital capitalism and the traditional financial establishment. Additionally, the “woke” ideology (what I call “totalitarian humanism”) that presently constitutes the self-legitimating ideological superstructure of the ruling class is not the sole creation of the Brahmins alone.
[->] Every ideological superstructure has a materialist base and class base
(which in the case of totalitarian humanism would be digital capital, the tech revolution, “financialization” of the kind that has emerged from neoliberalism, the expanded technocratic class which is the product of the wider degree of specialization and the division of labor rooted in increased technological sophistication).
Additionally, “wokeness” is rooted in the wider infrastructure of statecraft which can be traced, at the irreducible minimum, to the collusion between the Frankfurt School and the OSS during WW2, followed by the CIA’s creation of the Congress of Cultural Freedom in the 1950s. While elements of the ideological framework of totalitarian humanism may have their roots in the cultural revolution of the 1960s/1970s, in its present form “wokeness” represents a co-optation of those cultural patterns by the liberal wing of the capitalist class (a specific strategy that was devised by Fred Dutton as far back as 1970). The insurgent sectors of the managerial class (primarily the expanded professional class and rising middle-class sectors among traditional outgroups) became the socioeconomic foundation for this co-optation, which allowed
[->] the liberal wing of capitalism to marginalize labor unions
while cultivating these rising middle-class sectors as a replacement constituency for the traditional working class.
It appears that Yarvin wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to purge the Brahmins and their influence, but maintain the apparatus of the state, capital, and empire which is the source of the Brahmins’ empowerment and, once again, of which Yarvin himself is a part. For example, Yarvin completely ignores the relationship between the Brahmins and the state security and intelligence forces (as evidenced by the “Russiagate” hysteria). He also ignores the adoption of the Brahmin ideology even by the conventional military at the present time, and by the majority of the financial, industrial, and technological elites. Nor does Yarvin recognize
[->] the role of the financial oligarchy in maintaining the propaganda apparatus of the ruling class,
including the Murdoch mouthpiece FOX (which is also partially owned by Black Rock) and which conducted this interview with Yarvin.
Purging the leadership of Yale and Harvard or MSNBC and CNN (itself a good idea), while retaining the leadership of (for example) Facebook, Wells Fargo, Goldman-Sachs, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Koch Industries, Black Rock, State Street, Vanguard, Exxon-Mobil, AIPAC, the FBI, or the CIA to name only a few would be the biggest waste of time ever.
...
Moldbug, really? Real name Curtis Yarvin, who wrote "although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff". Yeah, sure: seems to me that he's a white supremicist who's just a little too cowardly to say so openly. Oh, and he thinks monarchy is the ideal political system.
From another discussion:
Leftist/ Cultural Marxist, PC left, CRT/SJW/BLM rhetoric*, explained:
000. use absurd SMEARS
00. project
0. gaslight
......
1. Deflect from what was actually said/done
2. Distort or lie about facts and evidence (such as straw manning)
3. Cherry pick evidence to fit the (victim/diversity) narrative / shift goal posts
4. Engage in emotive, feel good bs (special pleading) rather than use rational, objective thought
5. Use guilt by association ("you are a K-K-K/n-a-z-i") to smear people that dare to criticize PC/SJW leftist ideology.
[->] Use groupthink and scapegoating to marginalize critics of the PC left.
6. Demonize the personalities of opponents/critics.
7. Destroy the reputation, character and career of critics of the PC left
8. Use psychological violence, which could include doxxing, and threats of actual violence, against critics of the PC left.
-----
*Note: the above can be generalized to fit any ideology.
Ugh. Yarvin's still writing. He's on substack now -- I won't link to him though. What a great example of sharp critical faculties gone horribly wrong in the grip of a taboo counter-narrative. I do hope Lyons doesn't end up like that.
Tremendous
I think Goodhart's duality is actually cross-class: it spans shire Tories and working class communities. So it's really the socially (ultra)liberal vs the socially conservative.
A very timely observation about pain given our nation's avoidance and obsession with it--the "painkiller" epidemic that sparked the opiate epidemic--all in the name of "pain management." Growth often requires pain, any athlete knows this, but we have seemed to have forgotten it.
Far too much emphasis here on deep analysis and finer detail. Step back and take a look around you. Too many people, too much greed, too much selfishness and too much arrogance - equals lots of squabbling. People need to reconnect with the land, the wildlife, where their food comes from and the processes and life forms necessary for it to grow - that is what's real. The myriad of mental illnesses, among which is transgenderism and wokeism is symptomatic of our loss of connection with reality. It's simple, not complicated, no need for intellectual analysis. The problem which blocks the solution is the fact that there are now too many of us (especially in the UK where we now have only have enough useable land to feed 40 - 50% of our population without importing food) to be able to do this successfully.
Interesting piece. I have recently subscribed to NS Lyons and have enjoyed his insights and writing. Being a surgeon I am a somewhere and a “real” but in a higher socioeconomic class. I certainly identify and sympathize with other somewhere/real groups. I am a nationalist/populist as well.
Good interview.
And I'm impressed that the aspect of the disassociated Western psyche is finally getting discussed around virtual vs physical societies.
This is to my mind is a big part of it for the Russians. Dugin has written about how he sees the Western "end-game" looking - transhumanist, AI-integrated part-humans, in inflammatory tones. I think he has some good points and I think it's valid to consider that Westerners themselves may be incapable of controlling what they have created.
Under psychological pressure, Westerners tend to dissociate from the body and inhabit a thought-dominated world. This has enabled us to create some amazing techie stuff. But I think it's good to recognise the role of dissociation here in forwarding Western culture. It's really not all sweetness and light.
Slavs, on the other hand, under the same stressors tend to internalise the wounding, holding it in.
I believe the difference between the Western intellectual mind and the minds of other races is coming to the fore and beginning to dominate geopolitics.
A lovely little intellectual fairy-tale has been spun here.
Nice interview but I'm surprised no reference was made to the US intervention in Ukraine. From what I've read there is ample reason for Putin to defend Russia from Globohomo decadence and proxy chaos and violence.
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/01/war-us-weaponized-ukraine-russia/
https://mate.substack.com/p/by-using-ukraine-to-fight-russia?s=r
The title of the interview/analysis is Ukraine.
Putin's Duginist, anti-western attitude has been explained by all sorts of people pro/con, including those influenced by the "western self-loathing" syndrome:
https://quillette.com/2019/10/07/oikophobia-our-western-self-hatred/
And the (pro-Western) advocates for the idea that Russia is on the other "side" of the fault line that forms the "clash of civilizations": the "classically liberal" west and the ILLIBERAL east with its "asiastic hordes".
Zelinsky made a statement a few days ago about how he wants Ukraine to become like Israel, a militarized outpost on the frontier of the clash of civilizations.
Alexander, if you enjoyed Weird, you should check out Culture Hacks by Richard Conrad to get a better understanding of the subtler and not so subtle cultural differences between the Chinese and West.
Henrich references the early Church's ban on cousin marriage, which was an attempt to destroy or diminish the power of clannish social forms so that the establishment of the supranational role of the Church could proceed, as the crucial difference.
Henrich doesn't make clear the controversial fact that the early Church's ban on cousin marriage within clans turned NW Europe's gene pool from being inbred to outbred. The nuclear family and outbreeding increased genetic variability, including higher incidence of "liberal" personality traits and once the urban commoner classes began to expand along with increased river and sea trade (and windmills and printing presses), higher literacy, numeracy and IQ.
The Chinese gene pool is higher IQ because, as Ron Unz explained, the Chinese system of meritocratic bureaucracy (and polygamy by the rich, authoritarian bureaucrats) ensured that the poorest 20% of males never got the chance to marry and reproduce. But the high IQ Chinese authoritarian gene pool is not "liberal" in the western sense.
A very timely observation about pain given our nation's avoidance of and obsession with it. Lest we not forget that the "painkiller" epidemic (that sparked the opiate epidemic) was a result of a paradigm shift in modern medicine and the rise of "pain management." Growth often requires pain, any athlete knows this, but we have seemed to have forgotten it. After the Cold War, in the west, the multinational corporate state overthrew the sovereign nation state in a bloodless coup and the leaders of the new corporate state declared the playing field level. Anti-trust laws, unions, banking rules, workers’ safety regulations, and environmental protection, were deemed outdated and unnecessary hindrances to “the free market.” The politicians they owned and their mandarins in the press agreed. Increasingly overweight westerners flocked to warehouses full of cheap food, generic clothes, disposable furniture, and electronic distractions, most of it made in foreign sweatshops. Soon everyone had 500 channels, giant flat screens, and streaming porn. As long as the rich had cocaine, Cialis, Concerta, and Oxy, and the poor had crack, smack, and crystal, nobody seemed to notice the greatest consolidation of wealth in human history. Had Marx lived long enough to witness this strip mining phase of capitalism, he would have called it laissez-faire anarchy. In the end, these vast accumulations of wealth enervated the west’s transnational ruling class. Not only did they grow complacent and self-congratulatory, but their belief that the rules of geopolitics no longer applied led to strategic shortsightedness and imperial overstretch.
“the link between cultural cognition and geopolitical shifts.”
“ Morris ultimately makes the argument that it was a combination of good fortune and environmental factors that saw the West industrialise first and dominate the East.”
These two comments resonate as somewhat contradictory. And I also see them as representing a key difference in worldview that transcends geopolitics. Culture does matter not only as represented in outcomes as measured globally, but also domestically and individually. The US began its industrial revolution before the great wars. The culture embodied by The Idea that was contained in our founding documents of governance was the secret sauce that rocketed economic growth. The focus on rights of the divine individual rather than the fairness of the divine collective unleashed the creative entrepreneurial power and gave economic access to Everyman if he wanted it bad enough and would hard work and dogged persistence. It also caused men to “play chess” in politics as well as business. Unfortunately it has resulted in a corruption of corporatism today that is allowing geopolitical looting on a massive scale… but there are chess games to be played to fix it.
Also English has been the best language supporting business. It developed that way.
Ethiopia has always had abundant natural resources but it’s people have starved for centuries. Find any Spanish speaking Latin cultures that you would claim work well. Culture matters.
And the woke project is attempting to throw that baby out with the bath water. We need a civil rights renewal chess game to fix that.
There isn't any contradiction. See Gerhard Lenski on the relationship between environment and material factors in cultural evolution.
Walter Russell Mead brilliantly pointed out that many of the historical successes of the anglo-american West were accidental in their origins. The Dutch "invented" capitalism (which Mead calls the "ugly daughter of a rich man" in his book "God and Gold") on the foundation of the Hanseatic League, but since the British Isles are just isolated enough to be mostly free of the continental wars, Anglo-capitalism flourished relative to Dutch capitalism.
Both became cosmopolitan, but Anglo-capitalism was more ascendant because of the historical accident of being located on an island.
Mead cites the openness of capitalism (which is seen by most of the world as un-religious, un-spiritual, and thus an "ugly daughter") as one of the great accidents of historical success, but its tendency toward "missionary" schemes to want to spread liberalism to cultures and gene pools that are hostile to it.
These is no "accident" in the American Great experiment in that its design most correctly matches the basic psychology of the individual and best harnesses and exploits fundamental human behavior.
I have a general aversion to the argument from academics that something profound accomplished outside of their academic pursuits is labeled an accident. I always suspect some deductive agenda... and it is common from those that continue to push the collectivist alternative... as if the opposition to that ideology is fragile as it was just stumbled over and is prone to easy breaking. The opposite is the truth. The system of individual rights and liberty... one that supports and protects the personal pursuit of interests... it is the natural foundation of human existence that all other systems attempt to thwart and control with great misery and suffering.
incoherent gibberish
Above your pay grade apparently.
So you think English speaking cultures work well?
They beat the Spanish, French, Germans, Russians and spread their "modern rationalist" culture and market economic system almost everywhere on the planet, including many places that were horrified by classical liberalism and democracy.
If "working well" is defined as being better able to compete historically, the evidence is obvious and overwhelming.
A case can be made that the worse thing about Anglo-capitalism is its failure to completely eliminate the tendency toward "oriental despotism" and empire building, but the reality of human cultural evolution is that empires of some kind always temporarily prevail, or they have at least since the end of the ice and stone ages ages (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas, Islam, etc.)
https://quillette.com/2019/10/07/oikophobia-our-western-self-hatred/
Bolivar famously understood the problem of cultural evolution and the futility of attempting to impose liberalism and democracy on inbred tribal cultures that were absent the industrial economy and genetic and cultural pre-requisites for democracy and liberalism:
Post-independence regression to class, race and tribal wars, and Caudillismo
digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/28362/1/BolivarPen.pdf
...
Vd. sabe que yo he mandado veinte años y de ellos no he sacado más que pocos resultados ciertos:
[] 1º) La [latin] América es ingobernable para nosotros.
[] 2º) El que sirve una revolución ara en el mar.
[] 3º) La única cosa que se puede hacer en [latin] América es emigrar.
[--->] 4º) Este país caerá infaliblemente en manos de la multitud desenfrenada, para después pasar a tiranuelos casi imperceptibles, de to dos colores y razas.
[] 5º) devorados por todos los crímenes y extinguidos por la ferocidad, los europeos no se dignarán conquistarnos.
[] 6º) Si fuera posible que una parte del mundo volviera al caos primitivo, éste sería el último periodo de la [latin] América...
Not all, but most... compared to Spanish speaking cultures certainly.
Really? 100K deaths of misery a year from opioid overdose just in the US?
What does that have to do this point being made? Can you name a Spanish-speaking country that you see as working well?
Postmodern "green meme" relativism and pluralism is at a stage of self-loathing and victim narratives. Within the integral theory community Ken Wilber has argued for decades that the "mean green meme" (MGM) is grossly inadequate as the basis of reaching the next stage of cultural evolution because it is incapable of "transcending and including" the "partial truths" of earlier, mythic and modern-rationalist paradigms.
Wilber says MGM is reactionary and regressive. There is copious evidence for that in the bizarre antics of the "cultural left", postmodern neomarxism, etc.
Uruguay seems way better than most English-speaking countries I can think of right now.
Another classic on the "accidental successes" in the history of Anglo-American culture is Walter Russell Mead's "God and Gold".
This Mead video is a little bit long, but very accessible (not loaded with obscure jargon), and Mead is able to engage and entertain an audience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irqwQk3KE98
I recognise myself in this avoidance of pain by (in my case) railing against everyone’s emotional reactions to Ukraine’s incredible defence when all I want is for the killing to stop. As a breach event it feels now that I have merely been wishing the war away because it pulls a rug from under me that’s been there since my birth.
Looking forward to Lyons' explanation of
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-cyberattack-ukraine-z9gfkbmgf
Also, as a member of the intra-Beltway "foreign policy establishment", N.S. really ought to show better acquaintance with subject matter authorities like John Mearshimer, regarding Ukraine. Major omissions of basic facts like the 2014 color revolution, the Hunter Biden / Rosemont Seneca money laundering operation, etc. greatly diminish the credibility of the analysis.
https://vasko.substack.com/p/professor-john-mearsheimer-explains
Just as critics of Lyons really ought to show better acquaintance with their own self-loathing, neomarxist postmodernism:
https://quillette.com/2019/10/07/oikophobia-our-western-self-hatred/