Progressive Politics

Somebody (I forget who) once said that we just ended the second industrial revolution. What they meant was not factories, but people being shuffled about and breaking bonds. In the first industrial revolution, in France and England, a lot of people moved from the countryside to the cities. Here, in the USA everyone and their family has moved at least once, and maybe more , and changed jobs and careers. It probably had more effect on society than the first, once cars and computers and the internet was all in there too.

Europeans were less affected the last generation, than in the USA, because I think on average they moved around less. But with North America being so big, we in the USA are all like a lot of shaken up marbles who lost their heritage, most family (no more distant relations network for most) and are adrift.

I think its natural to shut down a lot of social interaction with so much disruption. Pretty sure any significant, rational political progress absolutely depends on us marbles getting our bearings back (dad joke)

I’m really interested in seeing a solution.

The only good thing about this mess is it also hampers the fascists from organizing in person. Which is the only reason their demonstrations are small now

This affects not just them but all political activities and grassroots. It’s an equal opportunity handicap that gives the established parties all the advantages.

I think if people had better places to hang out at , or a movement to make a chain of bookstores, stuff like that, it could help. The French discovered democracy in parlors back in 1700s and such franchises of meeting places have been used over and over again the last few hundred years.. and there is nothing wrong in reinventing the wheel

Wherever I can have fun, it’s a flexible definition

Brothels, and the like.

Treat others the way you would want others to treat you.

Which, interestingly, is also in the Pirkei Avot! The old rabbis were definitely onto something.

In general I agree, but I have one suggestion re: communication strategy.

I’ve thought similarly regarding the shared nature of the human condition and what that means for how we consider one another. But I’ve puzzled over how to properly share the idea, or rather the feeling, and experimented with different approaches.

So far, I’ve learned that once you start changing basic definitions of fundamental concepts, such as the self, you quickly lose others’ attention. This might be due in part to the prominence of that rhetorical pattern in a long history of mystic and gnostic traditions, for which it often seems confusion is the point, and “don’t ask me how i do it” is the answer (unless there is a “donation” for the instruction). For example, imagining “I as the cosmos” is fairly inaccessible to anyone who hasn’t spent the last few weeks stripping away layers of the self (or isn’t on at least some ayahuasca).

Martin Buber’s I and Thou spends a few hundred pages describing your idea, which boils down to (1) our notion of others (“thou,” the intimate version of “you”) being animated by an outward projection of self, and (2) our notion of self being constructed from inward reflections of ourselves in others’ eyes. Anthropomorphism, ascribing human personalities to animals, is an (otherwise curious) side effect of this distinctively human behavior.

As a social mechanic, it begets empathy and requires trust. Its antithesis is othering which always requires fear. It lends credence to the idea that the more you understand someone — their experiences, their motivations, their dreams — the harder it is to hate and the easier it is to love.

So if you’re looking for a way to communicate this notion of humanistic atonement (at-one-ment) to others, in a way they can use, consider how one might dispel fear and learn to trust.