Thread by @IntuitMachine

The idealization of the ethnic peasantry as the one true national class is the generating condition that lead to genocides in Nazi Germany, Armenia, and Cambodia. It is fueled by the resentment of the elite as the root of their own misery.

We need to learn from history and ask why a country like Cambodia will put a quarter of its population to death only because they were experts in different crafts. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian…

What collectively drives people to kill people on a mass scale? What makes people ignore their natural empathy for others? It is the collective delusion that the existence of another is the reason for one's misery.

It is the fiction that all misery will be extinguished when purity is re-established. It is a purity that is defined in terms of one's ethnicity and not on one's character.

Genocides happen when collectives become automatons, unable to disentangle their actions from a previously established fiction. That fiction is that their models of self are superior in a manner that is independent of one's behavior and character.

The destructiveness of this narrow mindedness is the same reason why a paper-clip maximizer can be destructive to all of humanity.

The root problem of the paper-clip maximizer is that its selfhood is decoupled from the selfhood of humanity. All autonomous things have a notion of selfhood and the issue of safety is related to the scope of that selfhood.

The narrower that selfhood and the power that that automation wields corresponds to the potential destructiveness of that automation.

We have already witnessed the destructiveness of the mindless covid-19 virus. It is the kind of automation that turns humans into factories of itself. Transforming a human into a vehicle for its further transmission to other humans.

There is an odd synergy where a peasant class sees that the spreading of a deadly virus is a tool for their agenda. Perhaps it is the absurd belief in a biological superiority that reduces the perceived risk.

Surely their rural stock that is exposed to more hardship that city folk have a stronger immunity against the virus. Unfortunately, it doesn't work this work. Diversity is what creates immunity, not monocultures.

Rural areas due to their sparse populations are best positioned to slow the spread of covid 19. Yet we have this counter-intuitive reality:

This cannot happen unless the population is in the joint conspiracy that accelerates its spread. The origin of this spread is not of incompetence but rather due to conspiracy (driven by ignorance).

The strategy of herd-immunity is genocidal in its logic. One therefore should not be surprised that the logic of genocidal behavior is shared by the belief of innate biological superiority.

But the spread of covid-19 is not unique to rural areas. The USA and Europe have accelerating spread. @umairh argues that it is a consequence of a culture of toxic-indifference. Said differently, it is the narrowing of self-hood. eand.co/how-the-west-g…

The emphasis on individualization in the West has driven scientific and technological progress. We unfortunately are seeing the downside of this in the inability to collectively manage an epidemic. Certain cultures are better positioned to address different kinds of problems.

This implies that Western nations must take extra-effort to communicate the benefits of collective action. Money should have been spent on Public Safety Announcements (PSA) and availability of PPE. Instead, trillions were spent to pump up the stock market. Treating the symptoms.

Addressing the #covid19 crisis is a behavioral and social issue and less of a bio-technological issue. The risks of a vaccine deployment going wrong is much larger than the risk of people wearing masks. Yet the benefits are equivalent.

Unfortunately, the social networks that are immensely powerful in subconsciously altering our behavior, was not deployed towards addressing collective action against the virus. It had the entirely opposite effect of galvanizing resistance against beneficial behavior.