Isn't duty basically a no-no word for the left? I wonder if there is a way to undo the polarization around free speech. A left that is not for free speech is fundamentally incoherent, since if there is something the left stands for, it's liberation, so I have no idea how they square the derision they currently have for free speech with the rest of their ideology. Jesus, it genuinely seems so hard. Maybe it's even impossible, the only way forward being if most people turn post-political. Then, perhaps free speech could be restored.
And it would be good for other reasons, since politics is just a bad thing to be passionate about anyway.
I suppose I just mean becoming indifferent to politics. Curtis Yarvin has sorta convinced me that it's dysfunctional for the man on the street to even be thinking of politics, that really should be left to specialists. Which makes it interesting that Yarvin is seen as on the right, with his pretty totalizing vision.
There's an interesting tension there: some people, both on the left and on the right, want to decentralize things, and some other people, again both on the left and on the right, want greater centralization. I suppose I am post-political in that I don't care about even democracy anymore, the "only" thing politics can really do is provide material prosperity and freedom, and I'm open to the possibility you don't need democracy for those things. Which sounds pretty blasphemous I know, but I am very open minded.
And you can't blaspheme anyway when it comes to politics because it is not transcendent: as it is purely about material conditions, anything political is of an inferior nature. There are more important things to do, and I have this intuition that if things get sorted out in spirituality, it will become easy or at least possible to sort things out politically.
I think they do, definitely, but I think getting the right answer in philosophy, spirituality, ethics, and so on, does not commit you to a particular political system. The function of politics, in my view, is to provide prosperity and freedom (which might be redundant, since can you really say you are flourishing if you can't say you are free?). Every political system can fail at that, and I think even un-democratic systems can fulfill these purposes. At least in principle.
But it's true that unchecked power can make people go crazy, and democracy is generally proposed as a way to provide that check, but maybe there are others? Yarvin proposes a government structured as a corporation: you have your CEO-monarch as your head of state, but there is a board of directors above him that, like in a corporation, is not involved in running the company/state, but can fire the CEO if he's not performing well.
Basically, the relation of philosophy, spirituality, ethics, and so on to politics is to validate if the political system is legitimate, but is agnostic as to implementation details. But of course, a big metric here is whether the people are happy: if the people have an ideological attachment to democracy, that is very relevant, and it would be wrong to impose some other system on them. But ideologies' come and go.
Isn't duty basically a no-no word for the left? I wonder if there is a way to undo the polarization around free speech. A left that is not for free speech is fundamentally incoherent, since if there is something the left stands for, it's liberation, so I have no idea how they square the derision they currently have for free speech with the rest of their ideology. Jesus, it genuinely seems so hard. Maybe it's even impossible, the only way forward being if most people turn post-political. Then, perhaps free speech could be restored.
And it would be good for other reasons, since politics is just a bad thing to be passionate about anyway.
Would be interested to know more about what you mean by "post-political." I definitely agree regarding the contradictions on the left.
I suppose I just mean becoming indifferent to politics. Curtis Yarvin has sorta convinced me that it's dysfunctional for the man on the street to even be thinking of politics, that really should be left to specialists. Which makes it interesting that Yarvin is seen as on the right, with his pretty totalizing vision.
There's an interesting tension there: some people, both on the left and on the right, want to decentralize things, and some other people, again both on the left and on the right, want greater centralization. I suppose I am post-political in that I don't care about even democracy anymore, the "only" thing politics can really do is provide material prosperity and freedom, and I'm open to the possibility you don't need democracy for those things. Which sounds pretty blasphemous I know, but I am very open minded.
And you can't blaspheme anyway when it comes to politics because it is not transcendent: as it is purely about material conditions, anything political is of an inferior nature. There are more important things to do, and I have this intuition that if things get sorted out in spirituality, it will become easy or at least possible to sort things out politically.
It seems to me that politics can't be neatly partitioned from philosophy, spirituality, ethics, etc. Do you think these spheres overlap at all?
I think they do, definitely, but I think getting the right answer in philosophy, spirituality, ethics, and so on, does not commit you to a particular political system. The function of politics, in my view, is to provide prosperity and freedom (which might be redundant, since can you really say you are flourishing if you can't say you are free?). Every political system can fail at that, and I think even un-democratic systems can fulfill these purposes. At least in principle.
But it's true that unchecked power can make people go crazy, and democracy is generally proposed as a way to provide that check, but maybe there are others? Yarvin proposes a government structured as a corporation: you have your CEO-monarch as your head of state, but there is a board of directors above him that, like in a corporation, is not involved in running the company/state, but can fire the CEO if he's not performing well.
Basically, the relation of philosophy, spirituality, ethics, and so on to politics is to validate if the political system is legitimate, but is agnostic as to implementation details. But of course, a big metric here is whether the people are happy: if the people have an ideological attachment to democracy, that is very relevant, and it would be wrong to impose some other system on them. But ideologies' come and go.