Scientific rationality is overrated, evolutionary rationality is underrated. If such behaviour is common, it suggests it is evolutionary stable = rational
Tribe needs mythology to unite it. And mythology must be dumbed down for the entire tribe to get it, otherwise it won't work
It is absolutely rational to believe in some dumbed down crap. Reality is incomprehensible in all of its complexity anyway. And when you start adding 1st nuance, 2nd nuance, 3rd nuance, it can't unite the tribe anymore. Working tribal mythologies are very dumb. Hence, rational
That's a common mechanism of social changes. When a party is small, its myth is nuanced, complicated. But once it expands, it *must* dumb it down to unite everyone. As a result, the old core (inner party) has a nuanced myth and the newcomers (outer party) have dumbed down version
At some point the outer party which believes in dumbed down crap will see the inner party with all their nuances as heretics and traitors. And someone from the inner party gonna weaponise this natural resentment of the outer party against his old comrades from the inner party
Inner vs Outer party dichotomy is a major factor behind the power usurpation. Democratic assabiyah almost inevitably evolves into a monarchy with a Divine Ruler, sole source of legitimacy. That's usually an Inner Party member who unleashed the Outer Party's against his comrades
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Iranian regime has many faults. Some of them are real, others are imaginary. All of these flaws are totally irrelevant, and give nothing for explaining this war
In the Middle East, there is a bad actor, a rogue state. That is Israel
A system of personal horsetrades with the elected politicians gives Israel a sway over the US foreign policy. That is the primary reason, why the American foreign policy has been so preoccupied with the Middle East, all along.
Israel is leveraging the US military machine to destroy every regional counterweight to its power. Should they win in Iran, they will manufacture a new conflict, and send the US troops against a new target
For decades, any resistance to the Reaganomics has been suppressed using the false dichotomy: it is either “capitalism” (= which meant Reaganomics) or socialism, and socialism doesn’t work
Now, as there is the growing feeling that Reaganomics don’t work, the full rehabilitation of socialism looks pretty much inevitable
I find it oddly similar to how it worked in the USSR. For decades, the whole propaganda apparatus had been advancing the false dichotomy: it is either socialism, or capitalism (= meaning robber barons)
Now, as there is a growing feeling that the current model does not work, we must try out capitalism instead. And, as capitalism means robber barons, we must create robber barons
We have to distribute all the large enterprises between the organized crime members. This is the way
Truth is: the words like Rus/Russian had many and many ambiguous and often mutually exclusive meanings, and not only throughout history, but, like, simultaneously.
For example, in the middle ages, the word "Rus" could mean:
1. All the lands that use Church Slavonic in liturgy. That is pretty much everything from what is now Central Russia, to what is now Romania. Wallachians, being the speakers of a Romance language were Orthodox, and used Slavonic in church -> they're a part of Rus, too
2. Some ambiguous, undefined region that encompasses what is now northwest Russia & Ukraine, but does not include lands further east. So, Kiev & Novgorod are a part of Rus, but Vladimir (-> region of Moscow) isn't
These two mutually exclusive notions exist simultaneously
The greatest Western delusion about China is, and always has been, greatly exaggerating the importance of plan. Like, in this case, for example. It sounds as if there is some kind of continuous industrial policy, for decades
1. Mao Zedong dies. His successors be like, wow, he is dead. Now we can build a normal, sane economy. That means, like in the Soviet Union
2. Fuck, we run out of oil. And the entire development plan was based upon an assumption that we have huge deposits of it
3. All the prior plans of development, and all the prior industrial policies go into the trashbin. Because again, they were based upon an assumption that we will be soon exporting more oil than Saudi Arabia, and without that revenue we cannot fund our mega-projects
Yes. Behind all the breaking news about the capture of small villages, we are missing the bigger pattern which is:
The Soviet American war was supposed to be fought to somewhere to the west of Rhine. What you got instead is a Soviet Civil War happening to the east of Dnieper
If you said that the battles of the great European war will not be fought in Dunkirk and La Rochelle, but somewhere in Kupyansk (that is here) and Rabotino, you would have been once put into a psych ward, or, at least, not taken as a serious person
The behemoth military machine had been built, once, for a thunderbolt strike towards the English Channel. Whatever remained from it, is now decimating itself in the useless battles over the useless coal towns of the Donetsk Oblast
Yes, and that is super duper quadruper important to understand
Koreans are poor (don't have an empire) and, therefore, must do productive work to earn their living. So, if the Americans want to learn how to do anything productive they must learn it from Koreans etc
There is this stupid idea that the ultra high level of life and consumption in the United States has something to do with their productivity. That is of course a complete sham. An average American doesn't do anything useful or important to justify (or earn!) his kingly lifestyle
The kingly lifestyle of an average American is not based on his "productivity" (what a BS, lol) but on the global empire Americans are holding currently. Part of the imperial dynamics being, all the actually useful work, all the material production is getting outsourced abroad